For God, Country and Coca Cola

BOOK
NON-FICTION
US & Canada Basic Books
1993

By Mark Pendergrast Translation Rights Sold

Chinese Simple Huaxia Publishing
BOOKS Lisa Bankoff, +1 212 556 5600, bbarta@icmpartners.com
House
TRANSLATION RIGHTS Helen Manders, +44 (0)20 7393 4425, helen@curtisbrown.co.uk
French Editions du Felin
Italian Odoya
How did an innocuous soft drink, more than 99% sweetened water, come to
Russian Inostranka
be regarded as “the sublimated essence of all that America stands for”?
Publishers

For God, Country & Coca-Cola is a cultural, social, and economic history of
America as seen through the green glass of a Coke bottle. And what a
quintessentially American tale it is. Coca-Cola began humbly as a patent
medicine amid the fervor and chaos of Reconstruction Atlanta. A shrewd
marketeer saw its value as a beverage, and it rapidly grew through the
Gilded Age to become the dominant consumer product of the American
Century.

The key to Coca-Cola’s success was ubiquitous advertising, as the

Company’s master myth-makers first created and then quenched the thirst
of a nation. And when World War II carried American troops overseas, the
soft drink went as well, laying the foundation for an enduring and lucrative
presence.

Drawing on previously untapped archival sources, For God, Country &

Coca-Cola paints vivid portraits of the entrepreneurs who led the Company:
pious Methodist Asa Candler, who nourished the fledgling enterprise across
the threshold of a century; cigar-chomping Robert Woodruff, who hosted
presidents at his Georgia plantation; the aristocratic Roberto Goizueta,
whose cosmopolitan background gave him the vision to reach global
markets; aggressive Doug Ivester, the self-styled “wolf” who declared war
on other soft drinks; and now Doug Daft, the Australian CEO who has
turned the company on its head by laying off 20% of the workforce.

All have left indelible imprints on Coca-Cola. Here, too, is a colorful

supporting cast of hustlers, ad men, zealots, and capitalist missionaries who
have made the soft drink the most recognizable trademark in the world.
Despite its occasionally tarnished image, the Company has marched
zealously forward with its cherished product — and its global conquest.

Provocative, controversial, and always entertaining, For God, Country &

Coca-Cola reveals how Coke has irrevocably transformed our world. As
family saga, cultural history, and, finally, the complete story of an American
icon, this book is “the Real Thing.”