Welcome to another edition of “From Our Shelves” where I read and review a book from our collections. This week's featured title is Barons: money, power, and the corruption of America's food industry (link to library catalog) by Austin Frerick. The book includes a foreword by Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation (link to library catalog).
This book is the real life account of seven robber baron dynasties and the empires they created. The book does not skimp on the details and gives us a solid and strong picture of these baron dynasties and how they control not just the American food systems but also food systems around the world.
The men, and they are mainly men, like to portray themselves as self-made men, but that is often far from the truth. They may have started out with a smart idea, concept, and/or product, but they did not do it all on their own. They had various forms of help along the way. Some ways were legal, others not so much. Often, the American government and U.S. taxpayers helped pay for their exploitative and often morally questionable successes. In one case, there is even a Nazi fortune involved.
The book is very easy to read. Corporate history books can often be long and dense, written for specialists. This book is written for regular secular readers. It explains concepts with ease, keeps jargon to a minimum, and it has a good narrative pace.
Locally, the following subject areas may want to consider this book for their classes:
- General Studies.
- Peace and Social Justice.
- Political Science.
- Economics.
- Business Administration.
- Agriculture.