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FOR GOD, COUNTRY, AND COCA-COLA: NEW EDITION

Mark Pendergrast

The Definitive History of the Great American Soft Drink and the Company That Makes It

FOR GOD, COUNTRY, AND COCA-COLA, the fizzy, "marvelously entertaining" (Los Angeles Times) story of the world's favorite beverage.
For God, Country and Coca-Cola is the definitive history of the great American soft drink and the company that makes it. From its origins as a patent medicine in Reconstruction Atlanta through its rise as the dominant consumer beverage of the American century, the story of Coke is as singular, appealing, and effervescent as the drink itself. Mark Pendergrast recounts more than a hundred years of the Coca-Cola Company with verve and a historian's eye for the telling detail, aligning Coke's success with the emergence of that other great American innovation - modern capitalism. With vivid portraits of the colorful cast of entrepreneurs, hustlers, swindlers, ad men, and con men who have made Coca-Cola the most recognized trademark in the world - and with a new afterword bringing the story up to today - this is business history at its best: authoritative, enlightening, and fun. Like Coke itself, For God, Country and Coca-Cola is "The Real Thing." Mark Pendergrast, a native of Atlanta, Georgia, grew up on West Paces Ferry Road, once known as "Coca-Cola Row." Pendergrast is also the author of Uncommon Grounds and many other books. He lives in Vermont.
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Published 2024-09-01 by Basic Books

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In For God, Country & Coca-Cola, author Mark Pendergrast combines lively writing and extensive research to tell the story of the caramel-colored drink that grew into a worldwide corporation and cultural phenomenon. Like its subject, Pendergrast's entertaining book can claim to be the real thing.

Behind the glitz and fanfare, the bubbly brown beverage has had a tortured and controversy-filled history. It is meticulously chronicled in For God, Country & Coca-Cola.

Marvelously entertaining history.

As Atlanta native Mark Pendergrast tells us in For God, Country & Coca-Cola , an obsession with growth has been a company hallmark for most of the past century. Pendergrast's account is a good deal more intriguing than the sanitized corporate history Coke peddles at its World of Coca-Cola museum

The book is full of wonderful stories and tidbits. . . . [W]hen Pendergrast reports the Cokelore he has gathered so assiduously, he is superb.

It is easy to trivialize soda . . . but as Mark Pendergrast demonstrates, to the people at Coke it is a deadly serious business. . . . He succeeds admirably in demonstrating . . . how Coke conquered the world.

A ripping good story of more than a soft drink or a company, this book is about the whole of America. It may be the greatest American story ever.

In For God, Country & Coca-Cola, Mark Pendergrast has written an encyclopedic history of Coke and its subculture, and used Coca-Cola as a metaphor for the growth of modern capitalism itself. His research and storytelling skills are prodigious.

Chinese: Shanghai Dook

A meticulously researched history...[Pendergrast] aggressively sets the record straight about the birth of Coke, shattering company myths.

By the time we move on to Coke's globe-drenching present, we have learned to trust Pendergrast's thorough research, lively style, and sense of perspective. [His book] is an epic, unbelievably grand in scope and implication

A NEW YORK TIMES "NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR"