Rating: 
Summary: Very good historical work, with good perspective
Review: Basically, this is a book on the history of Coca-Cola, with some really good information on the cola industry as a whole. Well-researched, and well-written, I enjoyed this book. It was especially interesting to see the honesty in regard to the cocaine and caffiene content issues that Coke had to deal with, and later the "New Coke" fiasco. My only complaint would be with the length and that its a bit slow moving. The people involved certainly aren't very likeable, but the author does a good job of putting everything into a proper historical context. It even has the "secret formula" for the drink, which I found interesting just to know what I'm drinking.
Rating:
Summary: Very good historical work, with good perspective
Review: Basically, this is a book on the history of Coca-Cola, with some really good information on the cola industry as a whole. Well-researched, and well-written, I enjoyed this book. It was especially interesting to see the honesty in regard to the cocaine and caffiene content issues that Coke had to deal with, and later the "New Coke" fiasco. My only complaint would be with the length and that its a bit slow moving. The people involved certainly aren't very likeable, but the author does a good job of putting everything into a proper historical context. It even has the "secret formula" for the drink, which I found interesting just to know what I'm drinking.
Rating: 
Summary: The "Definitive" History
Review: Coca-Cola, the great American soft drink that suggested to millions of Americans, "have a coke and a smile." Perhaps reading this well documented history of the company, you may not be smiling about Coke, but rather that this book is such a good read that its difficult to put down. Businesss journalist Mark Pedergast writes an objective account of Coca-Cola's history from its inception to mass production to symbol of American purity, with the attitude of de-mythologising some of the stories the company has sold to the public. I found the writing not only to be clear and concise, but remarkably well told considering all of the footnotes, appendices, and citations that Mr. Pendergast has accumulated to tell his tale. While the myths that Coca-Cola was developed by some poor root doctor in some chemical accident and that Coke never had cocaine in it are dispelled not to illuminate the company as a sham or to be looked down upon, but with integrity for the achievments of the company, yet, at the same time, not ignoring Coke's influence on American way of life and the individual psyche (making for it, in actuality, a better history than Coke dreamed of). Certainly, the myths that the company purports seem to be as nice as Haddon Sundblom's Santa Clause paintings where, everyday is Christmas, America is pure, and stories are taken out of history and placed in a Neverland of happy endings. Mr. Pendergast does a wonderful job of placing Coca-Cola back into American history writing how a company, such as Coca-Cola, did not arise to power by accident or love by the American people, but by greed, shrewd marketing, and religious fervor for their product. Unless one is not interested in knowing about such histories as this, or any other commercial empire, then there is no doubt one will enjoy this book thoroughly. One point I will make on this book is its title. This edition being the second titled, "For God, Country and Coca-Cola: Second Edition: Revised and Expanded: The Definitive History of the Great American Soft Drink and the Company That Makes It." For those that are fortunate enough to buy the first edition, one will speculate and wonder about the radical and decisive change in the title. The original title reads: "For God, Country and Coca-Cola: The Unauthorized History of the Great American Soft Drink and the Company That Makes It." Moving from "Unauthorized" to "Definitive" made me wonder why Coke changed their attitude about their own myths to the historically accurate. Perhaps this book makes that reality hard to argue.
Rating:
Summary: Good though it drags in the middle ...
Review: FOR GOD, COUNTRY, AND COCA-COLA is an interesting and exhaustive read about the history of what is likely the world's best known product, sugar water.
Pendergast most definitely did his homework on Coca-Cola. Accordingly, if you were curious about any facet of Coke's history up to the mid-to-late nineties, it's probably included in this book. I kid you not that the last hundred pages are all footnotes - it's that exhaustive.
Pendergast's meticulousness is both the strength and the weakness of this book. About halfway through, it starts becoming increasingly less interesting.
Thus I rate it a mixed bag. Great in being the definitive history of Coca-Cola, but also somewhat dry and dragging towards the end. But if you are extremely curious about Coke's history and have the will power to read 460 pages of fact after fact after fact regarding advertising schemes and bouts with Pepsi, pick this book up.
Rating:
Summary: Good though it drags in the middle ...
Review: FOR GOD, COUNTRY, AND COCA-COLA is an interesting and exhaustive read about the history of what is likely the world's best known product, sugar water. Pendergast most definitely did his homework on Coca-Cola. Accordingly, if you were curious about any facet of Coke's history up to the mid-to-late nineties, it's probably included in this book. I kid you not that the last hundred pages are all footnotes - it's that exhaustive. I love Coke though I often find myself bothered by the importance of a product that is nothing more than good-tasting water. If you are curious about Coke and have the will power to read 460 pages of history about this company, pick this book up. However, be forewarned that it's a major book that doesn't pull any punches. I probably drank at least a case of Coke while trying to read this thing. Kudos to Mark Pendergast for being so thorough though. I always wanted to know that Rome, GA had the highest per capita consumption of Coke in the world!
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining history of our times through a Coke bottle!
Review: I have always had a great fascination for the things that seem to define our lives in the Western world - those great style and cultural icons of our times. And nothing seems to typify this, in a truly frivolous sense of course, more than Coca Cola. This is detailed, meticulously researched and absolutely FASCINATING study of the history of Coke - not just who first made it and how it was first presented to a thirsty public (and no, it doesn't give you the formula), but how it has grown to become something that looms large in everyone's life, even if you're not a fan. More people drink Coca Cola in the world than coffee, but at this point I must confess that I don't drink Coke myself. There are entertaining stories of how the product evolved from a syrup served at every soda bar (ever wondered about that cocaine rumour - its in the book!); how every soldier in WW2 had a coke at the front, even if they didn't have bullets and medical supplies; and how jealously Coke guard their market share and branding. There are some really funny anecdotes from the Coke/Pepsi wars, especially when the formula was tinkered with to gain competitive advantage, and my favourite is the lady who berates a poor man stocking shelves with the "new" Coke, and when the man stacking Pepsi laughs, she berates him for his product as well. This is an amusing study of our society and how this innocent fizzy brown drink has become one of the most universally recognised products of our times. I remember I was reading this one night and my husband declared that he thought the whole book was nothing but an advertisement for Coca Cola. I laughed, told him it was a very entertaining study of a product that is now literally everywhere in the world. I then asked him to get me a Coke.
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining history of our times through a Coke bottle!
Review: I have always had a great fascination for the things that seem to define our lives in the Western world - those great style and cultural icons of our times. And nothing seems to typify this, in a truly frivolous sense of course, more than Coca Cola. This is detailed, meticulously researched and absolutely FASCINATING study of the history of Coke - not just who first made it and how it was first presented to a thirsty public (and no, it doesn't give you the formula), but how it has grown to become something that looms large in everyone's life, even if you're not a fan. More people drink Coca Cola in the world than coffee, but at this point I must confess that I don't drink Coke myself. There are entertaining stories of how the product evolved from a syrup served at every soda bar (ever wondered about that cocaine rumour - its in the book!); how every soldier in WW2 had a coke at the front, even if they didn't have bullets and medical supplies; and how jealously Coke guard their market share and branding. There are some really funny anecdotes from the Coke/Pepsi wars, especially when the formula was tinkered with to gain competitive advantage, and my favourite is the lady who berates a poor man stocking shelves with the "new" Coke, and when the man stacking Pepsi laughs, she berates him for his product as well. This is an amusing study of our society and how this innocent fizzy brown drink has become one of the most universally recognised products of our times. I remember I was reading this one night and my husband declared that he thought the whole book was nothing but an advertisement for Coca Cola. I laughed, told him it was a very entertaining study of a product that is now literally everywhere in the world. I then asked him to get me a Coke.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating
Review: In the late nineteenth century, cocaine was considered a wonder
drug. Heralded by medical journals, pharmacists, Freud and even several Popes - Pope Leo III was a regular imbiber of Vin Mariani, a wine created in 1863 that contained 2.16 grains of cocaine, in the recommended dose of six glasses per day. No doubt he felt very holy indeed, and his long life and "all-radiant" eyes were probably less due to his piety than his daily dose of this "healthful" and "life-sustaining" drug that had been so valued by the Incas. Dr. John Pemberton, an Atlanta druggist and doctor - he held two degrees and had created a master reference work containing over 12,000 tests - was anxious to create a drink that would be healthful and profitable. He was not immune to the vast literature hailing cocaine as a wonder drug. "The use of the coca plant not only preserves the health of all who use it, but prolongs life to a very great old age and enables the coca eaters to perform prodigies of mental and physical labor," he wrote in 1885. It was a time when patent medicines and elixirs were all the rage. Soda fountains would often offer as many as 300 different combinations of drinks. Advertisers tried to influence consumers to purchase one in favor of others, and huge signs were erected along railroads and roads to get the traveler's attention. It was not unusual for a patent medicine "advertiser of the era to clear-cut an entire mountainside to that he could erect a mammoth sign for Helmholdt's Buchu." A contemporary traveler described, "enormous signs are erected in the fields, not a rock is left without disfigurement, and gigantic words glare at as great a distance as the eye is able to read them." Pemberton's first product was French Wine Coca. It was loaded with cocaine, an extract of the kola nut (very high in caffeine) and damiana, the leaf of a plant with supposed aphrodisiacal powers. The concoction was advertised as a cure for virtually everything from nerve trouble and dyspepsia to impotence and morphine addiction. Opiate addiction was a huge problem after the Civil War. Known as the "Army Disease" because so many veterans were addicted. Pemberton himself was an addict trying to break the habit. He was convinced that cocaine was the best treatment for morphine addiction. In the meantime, by 1886, temperance was becoming a movement in the Atlanta area, so Pemberton began experimenting with a new beverage that excluded the wine. By adding citric acid, he eliminated some of the sugary sweet taste and eliminated the damiana but kept the coca and kola, hence the alliterative choice that his colleague Robinson came up with: Coca-Cola. They advertised it both for its medicinal benefits and as a new soda fountain drink. One ad read, "The new and popular soda fountain drink containing the properties of the wonderful coca plant and the famous cola nut." As it gained in popularity, the business convolutions kept pace, with Pemberton selling his rights to the business several times over. It was soon a mess. Asa Candler finally wound up with ownership of the trademark. He remained committed to quality and insisted that his distributors (a rather unique arrangement for the time) not tinker with the syrup recipe, although some of them did, one adding saccharine in an attempt to preserve the drink -- it was also an ironic attempt to make the drink as sweet as possible. Candler never thought bottling the drink would amount to much, so he virtually gave away the bottling rights, a prognosticatory failure that was to cost the company millions in later years to purchase them back. He and Frank Robinson (the real marketing genius, who invented the script logo for the drink) soon were collecting huge amounts of money as Coke took off. By 1900, Coca-Cola had become so popular it became a target for those who were terribly afraid someone might be out there enjoying themselves, i.e., the self-righteous, and soon pulpits all over attacked the nefarious qualities of the drink that was addicting children, of all people. It had also become a popular drink among the black population, and soon the KKK was suggesting that the black population was drinking Coca-Cola, becoming "drug fiends" and roaming the countryside in search of white women to ravish. Some white farm owners had indeed paid their sharecroppers, mostly black, with cocaine, since it was cheaper than alcohol, and cocaine addiction had become a serious problem. Ironically, Candler had already removed the minute traces of cocaine that had been in the formula. (The purity of the formula was somewhat of a joke, as several of the bottlers had added saccharin to make it sweeter, but also as a preservative.) The company by 1902 was promoting Coca-Cola as a healthful drink and the official Coke line is that the drink never contained cocaine, a typical PR prevarication, and not a particularly astute one since earlier company brochures had bragged about the healthful benefits of cocaine. In any case, the do-gooders, who wanted Coke declared an adulterated product because it contained caffeine managed to enlist the mighty forces of the FDA. Many expensive years later the suit finally died although Coke did reduce the amount of caffeine in the formula. They spent massive amounts of money on advertising, plastering the Coke logos on the sides of barns and giving out millions of items with the Coke logo. It was widely successful and soon Coke was the most popular drink around. Pendergrast's section on the infamous New Coke marketing disaster - or was it really an enormous accidental success - is fascinating. The outrage was enormous, but the publicity that resulted showed tremendous loyalty to a drink. Odd hype occurred almost everywhere. A study at Harvard Medical School compared the douche properties of the old Coke to those of the new, and found that the old Coke killed five times as many sperm as the new Coke. That's weird. The company completely failed to recognize that Coca-Cola had become an American institution, an icon. "They talk as if Coca-Cola had just killed God," moaned one executive. Coca-Cola had come to symbolize America; it was "associated with almost every aspect of their lives - first dates, moments of victory and defeat, joyous group celebrations, pensive solitude."
Rating: 
Summary: Great history of Coke - but where are the photos?
Review: Since my father was in the soft drink business for over 30 years -- he was a chemist for The Coca-Cola Company when I was born, and I believe we were the only kids on the block allowed to consume all the soda pop we desired, since we had cases of it in our garage -- I have always had an interest in the history of soda pop, and of The Coca-Cola Company in particular. I believe that even if the reader of this book was only marginally interested in Coke, he or she would be swept up in this well-researched and written book. Mark Pendergrast is a terrific writer -- this book reads like a compelling novel, and will be VERY difficult for the first-time reader to put down! I especially enjoyed the chapters on Coke's influence during WWII, as well as the "New Coke" debacle of the 1980's (the chapter is titled "The Worst Marketing Blunder of the Century"). Not to mention that the world-famous "secret formula" is revealed in this book as well! The only bone I have to pick with this edition is the lack of photos (which were in the first edition of this book). In a historical work like "For God, Country, and Coca-Cola" a photographic reference is absolutely necessary! Still a great read, though!P.S. I'm ordering a copy for my dad (who was a collegue of Coke president & CEO Roberto Goizueta in the 50's and 60's) - I know he'll get a kick out of it!
Rating:
Summary: Great read
Review: That was a very nice book, very detailed. I could even do an oral with it!
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