Research Catalog

Title

Chocolate wars : the 150-year rivalry between the world's greatest chocolate makers / Deborah Cadbury.

Author

Cadbury, Deborah.

Publication

New York : PublicAffairs, c2010.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xvii, 348 p., [16] p. of plates : ill.; 25 cm.

Summary

"Chocolate Wars is a delicious history of the fierce, 150-year business rivalry for one of the world's most coveted markets---chocolate---told through the story of one of its most distinctive competitors: Cadbury." "In the early nineteenth century Richard Tapper Cadbury sent his son, John, to London to study a new and exotic commodity: Cocoa. Within a generation, John's sons had created a chocolate company to rival the great English firms of Fry and Rowntree, and their European competitors Lindt and Nestle. The major English firms were all Quaker family enterprises, and their business aims were infused with religious idealism. Personal profiteering from business success was considered as shameful as debt, and the Cadburys aimed to do well by doing good. For generations, Quaker capitalism produced brilliant success. The English chocolatiers introduced the world's first chocolate bar and ever fancier chocolate temptations---while also writing groundbreaking papers on poverty, publishing authoritative studies of the Bible, and campaigning against a multitude of heartrending human rights abuses." "But the English chocolate dynasties could not have the global chocolate market to themselves. In America, Milton Hershey and later, Forrest Mars, would prove that they had the appetite for business on a huge scale, and successfully resisted the English companies' attempts to master the American market. As chocolate companies raced to compete around the globe, Quaker capitalism had met a challenge that would eventually defeat it. In the new millennium, Cadbury, the sole independent survivor of England's chocolate dynasties, was transformed into the world's largest confectionery company." "But before long it, too, would face a threat to its very survival. High ideals alone could not defeat the highly leveraged and speculative tactics of the global food companies. The chocolate wars would culminate in a multibillion-dollar showdown pitting independence and Quaker tradition against the cutthroat tactics of a corporate behemoth." "Featuring a cast of savvy entrepreneurs, brilliant eccentrics, and resourceful visionaries, Chocolate Wars is the life story of a uniquely alluring product---and of the evolution, fot better and worse, of modern business."--BOOK JACKET.

Subjects

• Chocolate industry > History
• Cadbury (Firm) History
• Cadbury family

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 325-333) and index.

Contents

Part I -- Chapter 1. A Nation of Shopkeepers -- Chapter 2. Food of the Gods -- Chapter 3. Wretched Little Victims of the Workhouses -- Chapter 4. They Did Not Show Us Any Mercy -- Chapter 5. Absolutely Pure, Therefore Best -- Part II -- Chapter 6. Chocolate That Could Melt in the Mouth -- Chapter 7. Machinery Creates Wealth but Destroys Men -- Chapter 8. Money Seems to Disappear Like Magic -- Chapter 9. Chocolate Empires -- Chapter 10. I'll Stake Everything on Chocolate! -- Part III -- Chapter 11. Great Wealth is Not to Be Desired -- Chapter 12. A Serpentine and Malevolent Cocoa Magnate -- Chapter 13. The Chocolate Man's Utopia -- Chapter 14. That Monstrous Trade in Flesh and Blood -- Chapter 15. God Could Have Created Us Sinless -- Part IV -- Chapter 16. This Company Isn't Enough for Both of Us -- Chapter 17. I Pray for Snickers -- Chapter 18. American Tanks Were on the Lawn -- Chapter 19. The Quaker Voice Could Still Be Heard -- Chapter 20. They'd Sell for 20p -- Chapter 21. Gone. And It Was So Easy.

ISBN

• 9781586488208 (hc)
• 1586488201 (hc)

LCCN

2010022905

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries