Citizen Coors: A Grand Family Saga of Business, Politics, and Beer

by Dan Baum

Book Overview

Citizen Coors is the riveting saga of an American dynasty. From the moment the destitute Prussian Adolph Coors stows away on a Baltimore-bound ship in 1868 to the worldwide expansion of the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060959460
• Release Date: April 2001
• Publisher: Harper Paperbacks
• Length: 400 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Fascinating tale of one of America's most hated corporations

That you can walk into just about any convenience store in America today and find Coors Light on the shelf should be considered one of the great miracles of modern business. Founded in 1876 by Prussian immigrant Adolph Coors, the Coors Brewing Company prospered in its early years by focusing its full attention on making consistently great beer. A century later, Coors' business practices made it look as if were hopelessly stuck in the nineteenth century. Led then by the two staunchly conservative grandsons of Adolph (Bill and Joe), Coors did it's best to pretty much piss off everyone who had ever had anything to do with the company. The brothers were determined, at all costs, to run Coors the way they saw fit. This meant getting rid of the unions (through strong-armedand often illegal tactics); shunning the concept of marketing (believing that Coors, because of it's strict adherence to quality, sold itself); completely ignoring modern business practices (no accountants, no legal department, no debt); alienating their network of distributors and retailers with idiosyncratic rules for handling Coors products; aggravating customers with nearly impossible-to-open beer cans; and, in the case of Joe Coors, spreading extremely conservative ideological venom wherever he went.Joe Coors used profits from the brewery to establish the Heritage Foundation (the right-wing's answer to the Brookings Institution), and through this jackboot organization, pretty much got Ronald Regan elected President in 1980. Joe's politics, along with Coors treatment of its employees, minorities, women, gays, and the unions, led to one of the most successful, and still on going, consumer product boycotts in American history.Citizen Coors tells the whole story from the beginning. It reads like a novel. That I have any sympathy for the Coors family, at all, is a testament to the careful writing of the author, Dan Baum. Coors, at times, is presented to the reader as the misunderstood protagonist; with the media, unions, and leftist groups out to destroy Coors for no good reason. And hindsight about the reality of modern marketing almost makes your heart pull for Coors as you read about every marketing misstep they took throughout the 1960's and 70's. By the early 80's, it would have been hard to find a company the size of Coors that was more poorly managed. Coors would more than likely have capitulated had Joe Coors' son, Peter, not learned to stand up to his father and to accept the reality in which Coors found itself in. Peter, though, was plagued with self-doubt about his own abilities as a leader, but to his credit, was smart enough to look outside the Coors cocoon for answers. In the end, the family had to acquiesce it's near-totalitarian control of the company to the slick marketers it had always loathed. This is a remarkable book about family, the evolution of American business, and the failures of the labor movement coupled with the rise of conservatism in this c

Facinating!

Even tho' this is a business book, I found it hard to put down. The author writes in such a way as told hold you spellbound to see what the next gaff the Coors family will make. I found that while Coors made a superb beer, they were clueless to the realities of contemperary marketing, and image building. They were lucky to survive. The book made me want to get an update on the brewers current status! Very enjoyable!!

Amazingly Compelling

Two of my neighbors read this book and told me, repeatedly, that I'd love it. They said they'd both finished it in two days. Finally they gave it to me for my birthday--and I spent my birthday (and most of the following night) reading it. I finished it in even less time than they did--and me, a fiction reader!The Coors family saga is fascinating. It's a classic American success story, with elements straight out of a Greek tragedy. The very qualities that made the family succeed so well for the first hundred years--attention to product quality and family concepts of integrity--nearly destroyed them in the last twenty-five.I can't agree with the earlier reviewer, who commented that the book was poorly organized. I thought the author did a great job of interweaving story lines, so I understood what all of the players were doing during a given period of time.I thought the author also did a good job of remaining unbiased. He may have had "Eastern Establishment" leanings, as one of the other reviewers commented, but I thought he painted the Coors family members in a reasonably sympathetic light. He certainly helps you understand how people with their family background--immigrant founder who built the business from scratch--would have developed some of the attitudes they hold (or held).My only problem with the book was that the anecdotes were so fascinating that I was compelled to read long sections to my husband--even though he fully intended to read the book himself as soon as I finished it.I highly recommend this book!

If you liked Titan...you'll love Citizen Coors

...Congratulations to Dan Baum for making Citizen Coors a very enjoyable read. His research is excellent and evident and his story telling is intriguing. ...The Coors family has it all: money, murder, family dissent, recovery. I found it to be much, much more than a "business" read (although it does give some excellent examples of different business philosophies and why they did/did not work.) I highly recommend this fascinating book.C. Roberts New Jersey

Destined to be a Classic

Not all newspaper reporters can write and not all writers are good newspaper reporters. However, every once in a while someone comes along that can do both, sometimes exceptionally well. Such a person is Dan Baum, formerly a reporter for both the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and The Wall Street Journal. He is the author of the highly acclaimed Smoke and Mirrors,an explosive account of the so-called war on drugs, and this marvelous work on a Colorado company that many people love to hate. This book, an historical narrative of the Adolph Coors Company, a family and business legend in America, is destined to be a classic and will be the standard by which all other efforts are judged. It provides a real eye-opening insight into the corporate world of politics, sex, religion, money, drugs, cover-ups and environmental degradation that will stay with you long after you have finished the book. Its all here. The story of Adolph Coors, the immigrant that made a fortune against all odds and left a legacy that some say still haunts the company to this day. Baum notes that "Even though Adolph Coors died in 1929, he was still effectively running the company more than sixty years later." The results of a 1929 business philosophy on a national company in 1999 will leave you astounded. There is a well written overview of the Political Left and the American Labor movements protracted boycott of Coors as well as the rise of the conservative movement and the founding of the Heritage Foundation. The prominent role of the Coors family in the success of the Reagan revolution, and its impact on the company, is riveting and revealing. The Coors family were brilliant engineers that invented the aluminum beverage can; made what many beer connoisseurs believed to be an excellent product; refused to incur debt; and became rich by demanding a quality product, often at the expense of profit. At the same time, the results of their refusal to employ modern marketing techniques and compete with the likes of Miller's Brewing and Budweiser is absolutely amazing. The story of the Coors family and company is complex and at times maddening. Regardless of your political persuasion; liberal, conservative, or independent, this book will give you something to cheer about and will keep you up late at night turning pages. It is highly readable, meticulously researched and a welcome addition to the history of business in America, not to mention the political implications. It is a spellbinding story of a Colorado company with truly national ramifications. That it is written by a writer of the caliber of Dan Baum is a real bonus for the reader.