Review by Choice Review
Power. Secrecy. Control. And, of course, profit. These words thread their way through Kochland, Leonard's brilliant history of the half-century since Charles Koch inherited leadership of Koch Industries and built it into a colossus. That Leonard (a respected business reporter) does not describe Koch as self-righteous shows his evenhandedness as he details Koch's efforts both to limit government action to the support of private property, especially that of the rich and influential, and to manage employees as if they exist only to generate profits. Koch's massive funding for think tanks, public relations, university programs, and lobbying has influenced national conversations and policies, while teams of lawyers have mitigated legal challenges resulting from environmental and safety violations. Vivid portraits of a wide array of people and their lives, both inside and outside the company, draw the reader through the high-powered, increasingly global drama that still centers on Wichita, Kansas. Leonard excels at concise, accurate contextualization that explains everything from economic and financial intricacies to combat over climate change. Exhaustive research and compelling writing combine in this page-turner, illuminating as much about the US and its recent economic and political history as about Koch Industries. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals; general readers. --Pamela W. Laird, emerita, University of Colorado Denver
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by New York Times Review
Christopher Leonard, who has written for The Washington Post and Bloomberg Businessweek, devoted nearly a decade to researching "Kochland." This is a massive, and massively reported, book. But what's most impressive is its refreshing balance and evenhandedness. Leonard does not judge the Kochs; he explains them - their operations and acquisitions, successes and failures, trading strategies, business philosophies and family feuds. Almost as notable, from a journalist's point of view, is the degree to which Leonard succeeds without the kind of cooperation all authors seek. He appears to have had only limited access to Koch executives, including, it appears, a single interview with Charles Koch. Tackling the biography of a secretive private company like Koch, which has little need to open itself to scrutiny, is a task of herculean difficulty. Every business holds its secrets, but at least a public company has financial reports one can peruse; writing the history of a private company without full access is akin to scaling El Capitan without handholds.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [September 3, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
Ask the average American what, exactly, Koch Industries does, and they may be uncertain. Energy? Building materials? Paper products? All of the above, and much more. There is hardly an aspect of the American manufacturing and consumer marketplace that can't be linked back to a Koch company. And yet, the full schematic of the infrastructure of this business behemoth is one of corporate America's abiding secrets, and that's just the way the notoriously reticent Charles Koch likes it. His was a vision based on an unrelenting drive, an uncanny market sense, and an often-unscrupulous pursuit of untold wealth. Leonard covers the specific properties of the energy industry that was, and is, the foundation of the Koch family fortune, as well as Charles Koch's singular management philosophy, which propelled the company's massive expansion into a diverse field of products and services. Ultimately, Leonard's intricately developed and extensively researched history of the Koch empire is a colossal corporate biography that sheds important light on this closely guarded enterprise while simultaneously scrutinizing the nefarious underpinnings of American economic policies and practices.--Carol Haggas Copyright 2019 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
American capitalism at its most successful and domineering is at the center of this sweeping history of a much-vilified company. Business journalist Leonard (The Meat Racket) recounts the 50-year growth of Koch Industries, a privately held, infamously secretive conglomerate--with interests in oil refineries, pipelines, lumber, commodities trading, fertilizer, and greeting cards--under CEO Charles Koch, whose libertarian ideology and political donations make him a godfather of the Republican right. Leonard paints Koch as a brilliant businessman whose fanatically entrepreneurial company--employees fervidly embrace his "market-based management" philosophy--thrives on turning underperforming assets into moneymakers. He also probes a very seamy underbelly: an oil-theft scandal and illegal dumping of toxins (the company has since cleaned up its act, Leonard notes), a penchant for gaming government regulations while denouncing the regulatory state, and heavy-handed lobbying and political organizing to stymie climate change legislation. The company's ruthlessness is spotlighted in his accounts of Koch's sometimes violent battles with unions; Leonard profiles workers whose wages and security dwindled while computerized regimentation and staffing cuts made their jobs grueling and unsafe. Leonard's superb investigations and even-handed, clear-eyed reportage stand out. Agent: Lauren Sharp, Aevitas Creative Management. (Aug.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Investigative business reporter Leonard (The Meat Racket) provides a far-reaching history from the late 1960s onward of the privately owned Koch Industries and its role in tearing away America's New Deal consensus. Depicting Charles Koch's control of the company as complete, Leonard says Koch, using a system called market-based management, has molded the company to mirror his libertarian philosophy. According to the author, after some acquisition missteps, brushes with government regulators, and a family schism, Koch Industries became successful by playing to its strengths of reacting to change quickly, taking a long-term view, and sourcing information from multiple channels. Leonard details the company's commodities trading, expansion efforts, and union busting. He shows how Koch's political power has intimidated elected officials, elected friendly ones, and influenced both tax and environmental policy to its advantage. VERDICT Based on six years of research and with a fast-paced writing style that interweaves multiple stories, this illuminating work on the exceedingly influential Koch and his company will be welcomed by all readers of business or politics. Leonard does for Koch what Andrew Sorkin's Too Big To Fail did for the 2008 financial crisis.--Lawrence Maxted, Gannon Univ. Lib., Erie, PA
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A massively reported deep dive into the unparalleled corporate industrial giant Koch Industries.In 1967, Charles Koch inherited from his recently deceased father the leadership of a medium-sized, nearly invisible industrial conglomerate based in Wichita, Kansas. Charles would build the conglomerate into an entity so sprawling, profitable, and politically powerful that it seems to defy all reason. "Koch's operations span the entire landscape of the American economy," writes business reporter Leonard (The Meat Racket: The Secret Takeover of America's Food Business, 2014). "The company's story is the story of America's energy system, of its blue-collar factory workers, of millionaire derivatives traders, corporate lobbyists, and private equity deal makers." Brother David shared ownership and participated in management of the company, which never sold stock to the public. Another brother challenged Charles by filing lawsuits but, over the decades, finally pulled back. The fourth brother never became involved in the operation of the business. As the author shows, the Koch brand does not appear on consumer products. Rather, the brothers became multibillionaires by controlling oil and gas production, paper products, derivatives trading in multiple commodities, engineering services, and much more. At first interested in influencing electoral politics to aid Koch Industries' profitability, Charles eventually expanded the corporate presence inside state legislatures and the U.S. Congress partly for ideological reasons. Labeling Charles' political philosophy is impossible, but there is definitely a kinship to libertarianism, with an emphasis on capitalist free markets untrammeled by government intervention. Charles opposed almost every policy of President Barack Obama and then battled various Donald Trump initiatives for entirely different reasons. Leonard is especially skilled at explicating the politics as well as at delineating how Koch Industries dominated industrial sectors, with natural gas extraction via fracking a timely recent example. This impressively researched and well-rendered book also serves as a biography of Charles Koch, with Leonard providing an evenhanded treatment of the tycoon. Leonard's work is on par with Steve Coll's Private Empire and even Ida Tarbell's enduring classic The History of the Standard Oil Company.A landmark book. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
