Chocolate Wars

Product Description

The delicious true story of the early chocolate pioneers by the award-winning writer & direct descendant of the famous chocolate dynasty Deborah Cadbury In Chocolate Wars bestselling historian & award-winning documentary maker Deborah Cadbury takes a journey into her own family history to uncover the rivalries that have driven 250 years of chocolate empire-building. In the early nineteenth century Richard Tapper Cadbury sent his son John to London to study a new & exotic commodity: cocoa. Within a generation Johns sons Richard & George had created a chocolate company to rival the great English firms of Fry & Rowntree & their European competitors Lindt & Nestle. The major English firms were all Quaker family enterprises & their business aims were infused with religious idealism. In America Milton Hershey & Forrest Mars proved that they had the appetite for business on a huge scale & successfully resisted the English companies attempts to master the American market. As chocolate companies raced to compete around the globe Quaker capitalism met a challenge that would eventually defeat it. At the turn of the millennium Cadbury the sole independent survivor of Englands chocolate dynasties became the worlds largest confectionary company. But before long it too faced a threat to its very survival & the chocolate wars culminated in a multi-billion pound showdown pitting independence & Quaker tradition against the cut-throat tactics of a corporate leviathan. Featuring a colourful cast of savvy entrepreneurs brilliant eccentrics & resourceful visionaries Chocolate Wars is the story of a uniquely alluring product & of the evolution for better & worse of modern business.