Customer Reviews

Citizen Coors: A Grand Family Saga of Business, Politics, and Beer

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That you can walk into just about any convenience store in America today and find Coors Light on the shelf should be considered one of the great miracles of modern business.

Founded in 1876 by Prussian immigrant Adolph Coors, the Coors Brewing Company prospered in its early years by focusing its full attention on making consistently great beer. A century later, Coors' business practices made it look as if were hopelessly stuck in the nineteenth century. Led then by the two staunchly conservative grandsons of Adolph (Bill and Joe), Coors did it's best to pretty much piss off everyone who had ever had anything to do with the company. The brothers were determined, at all costs, to run Coors the way they saw fit. This meant getting rid of the unions (through strong-armed
and often illegal tactics); shunning the concept of marketing (believing that Coors, because of it's strict adherence to quality, sold itself); completely ignoring modern business practices (no accountants, no legal department, no debt); alienating their network of distributors and retailers with idiosyncratic rules for handling Coors products; aggravating customers with nearly impossible-to-open beer cans; and, in the case of Joe Coors, spreading extremely conservative ideological venom wherever he went.

Joe Coors used profits from the brewery to establish the Heritage Foundation (the right-wing's answer to the Brookings Institution), and through this jackboot organization, pretty much got Ronald Regan elected President in 1980. Joe's politics, along with Coors treatment of its employees, minorities, women, gays, and the unions, led to one of the most successful, and still on going, consumer product boycotts in American history.

Citizen Coors tells the whole story from the beginning. It reads like a novel. That I have any sympathy for the Coors family, at all, is a testament to the careful writing of the author, Dan Baum. Coors, at times, is presented to the reader as the misunderstood protagonist; with the media, unions, and leftist groups out to destroy Coors for no good reason. And hindsight about the reality of modern marketing almost makes your heart pull for Coors as you read about every marketing misstep they took throughout the 1960's and 70's. By the early 80's, it would have been hard to find a company the size of Coors that was more poorly managed. Coors would more than likely have capitulated had Joe Coors' son, Peter, not learned to stand up to his father and to accept the reality in which Coors found itself in. Peter, though, was plagued with self-doubt about his own abilities as a leader, but to his credit, was smart enough to look outside the Coors cocoon for answers. In the end, the family had to acquiesce it's near-totalitarian control of the company to the slick marketers it had always loathed.

This is a remarkable book about family, the evolution of American business, and the failures of the labor movement coupled with the rise of conservatism in this country. Dan Baum has done his research. I question how he would be privy to a century's worth of private conversations between Coors' family members (as they did not cooperate very much with the author). But, I'm willing to suspend disbelief in favor of the overall story. If you're into history, politics, and enjoy a good beer now and again, you'll love Citizen Coors.

I loved this book. Very neat in learning the family history of the Coors, their role in politics and how all this was reflected in their family brewery business. I would recommend this book to my family and friends.

An eye opener to how a bunch of wealthy disfunctional sad people shaped and strengthened the conservative right. Well written, comprehensive, engaging.

The saga of the Coors family has all the makings of a great movie. It tells a great story that involves: politics (Reagan), labor tensions, sex scandals, suicides and ecology. Ultimately it shows both the triumphs and pitfalls of stubbornly committing to only doing things the way you see fit.

I grew up in Colorado and knew a lot about the company, but still found this informative. Believe it or not, we used to go to the Coors Brewery for school field trips and I had some frends whose father's worked there in the late 70s. The labor discussions brought back memories.

This book is objectively written and reads more like a novel. I find the labor issues very interesting with both the ugly side of both management and union tactics presented. However, it paints a more negative view of organized labor and the lengths they will go when a comapany does not want to 'play ball'.

Even tho' this is a business book, I found it hard to put down. The author writes in such a way as told hold you spellbound to see what the next gaff the Coors family will make. I found that while Coors made a superb beer, they were clueless to the realities of contemperary marketing, and image building. They were lucky to survive. The book made me want to get an update on the brewers current status! Very enjoyable!!

The book explained how Coors was one of the few breweries which succeeded out of hundreds a century ago. The foundation of its success is a dedication to quality. By using the finest ingredients and products, the drinker enjoys great taste as well as a good buzz. The Coors family made many critical mistakes, their ideals, right or wrong, set many people against them. They were slow to change with the times, for example they didn't promote their fine product effectively. The descrption of the Coors family members was often quite complete.

Discussions on the Business aspects of the Coors saga was what interested me the most. Found the story lines on Joe Coors' politics to be dull. I skipped some of these sub-sections. Was facsinated with all the facts and details regarding the family's story and its focus on engineering and technology.