Kochland
Kochland is an exceptional account telling how one of the world’s greaterst private companies rose to the pinnacle of modern corporate America. The annual revenue of Koch Industries is greater than that of Facebook, US Steel, and Goldman Sachs combined. It is everywhere: from the fertilizers that make our food to the Wall Street trading in all the market’s commodities. But there’s another side to this story. If you want to understand how the unions were killed in this country, how the income divide was widened, and how Koch bought the influence industry, all you have to do is read this book. Fair and meticulous, Kochland is a dazzling feat of epic narrative writing and investigative reporting that takes you deep inside the rise of a vastly powerful family corporation that has come to influence American workers, markets, elections, and the very ideas debated in the public square.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2019
WINNER OF THE J ANTHONY LUKAS WORK-IN-PROGRESS AWARD
FINANCIAL TIMES’ BEST BOOKS OF 2019
NPR FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2019
FINALIST FOR THE FINACIAL TIMES/MCKINSEY BUSINESS BOOK OF 2019
KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST BOOKS OF 2019
SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL BEST BOOKS OF 2019
“Superb… Among the best books ever written about an American corporation… Not since Andrew Ross Sorkin’s landmark Too Big to Fail (2009) have I said this about a book, but Kochland warrants it: If you’re in business, this is something you need to read.”
— Bryan Burrough, The New York Times Book Review
“Kochland is a dazzling feat of investigative reporting and epic narrative writing, a tour de force that takes the reader deep inside the rise of a vastly powerful family corporation that has come to influence American workers, markets, elections, and the very ideas debated in our public square. Leonard’s work is fair and meticulous, even as it reveals the Kochs as industrial Citizens Kane of our time.”
— Steve Coll, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Private Empire
“Leonard’s visionary, decade-spanning, and heart-rending investigation into the Koch Empire is indispensable not just for understanding the rise of corporate power in America, but for understanding America itself. Kochland will take its place alongside Chernow’s Titan and Coll’s Private Empire as one of the great accounts of American capitalism.”
— Jesse Eisinger, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of The Chickenshit Club
“A Robert Caro-like narrative of business and political power with a brilliant, ruthless, and fascinating monopolist at its center. Leonard devoted eight years to this gem of a book, seeking to understand the mysterious Charles Koch and the Goliath he has taken a half century to construct.”
— Ken Auletta, New York Times bestselling author of Googled
“Deeply and authoritatively reported... [Kochland] marshals a huge amount of information and uses it to help solve two enduring mysteries: how the Kochs got so rich, and how they used that fortune to buy off American action on climate change.”
— Jane Mayer, The New Yorker
“Impressive… A corporate history, lucidly told, about the enormous energy conglomerate that has inserted itself into nearly every aspect of daily life, raking in billions along the way.”
— The New York Times
“This is fast-paced business history. An episode about ammonia runoff at an oil refinery keeps you turning pages like a John Grisham thriller.”
— NPR.org
“With deep reporting and narrative flair, Leonard has rendered a revealing portrait of the Koch family as ruthless businessmen and savvy political operatives who quietly built an empire and defined the face of American capitalism and its hold on Washington over the last fifty years.”
— William Cohan, New York Times bestselling author of House of Cards
“Impressive… Kochland is the most definitive account yet of how one of America’s richest and most powerful families amassed its fortune.”
“If you want a crash course in the evolution of postmodern capitalism over the last five decades read Kochland.”
— New York Journal of Books