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The King of Vodka: The Story of Pyotr Smirnov and the Upheaval of an Empire
384Overview
“An impressive feat of research, told swiftly and enthusiastically.” —San Francisco Chronicle
From Vanderbilt and Rockefeller to Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, America’s captains of industry are paragons of entrepreneurial success, and books about business history, from The First Tycoon to The Big Short, show exemplars of capitalistic cunning and tenacity…but just as American cocktail connoisseurs can mistake Absolut, Skyy, Grey Goose, or Ketel One for the quintessential clear spirit, so too has America’s vision of business history remained naïve to a truth long recognized in Eastern Europe: since the time of Tsar Nicholas, both vodka and commercial success have been synonymous in Russia with one name—Smirnoff. Linda Himelstein’s critically acclaimed biography of Russian vodka scion Pyotr Smirnov—a finalist for the James Beard Award, winner of the IACP and Saroyan Awards, and a BusinessWeek Best Business Book of 2009—is the sweeping story of entrepreneurship, empire, and epicurean triumph unlike anything the world has ever seen before.
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9780060855918 |
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Publisher: | HarperCollins Publishers |
Publication date: | 11/30/2010 |
Series: | P.S. Series |
Pages: | 384 |
Sales rank: | 952,308 |
Product dimensions: | 8.14(w) x 11.64(h) x 1.18(d) |
About the Author
Table of Contents
The Cast ii
Author's Note xiii
Prologue: Good-bye xv
Part 1
Chapter 1 Hello 1
Chapter 2 Moscow 17
Chapter 3 The Land of Darkness 35
Chapter 4 The Vodka Maker 53
Chapter 5 "Demand Smirnov Vodka" 67
Chapter 6 To Vienna and Back 81
Chapter 7 Mariya 95
Chapter 8 Vodka Wars 113
Chapter 9 The Vodka King 129
Chapter 10 From Pursuit to Preservation 137
Chapter 11 Monopoly Capitalism 153
Chapter 12 The Tsar and 3,000 Flashing Bottles 171
Chapter 13 Twilight 179
Chapter 14 Two Dead Bodies 195
Part 2
Chapter 15 A New Century, a New Reality 203
Chapter 16 Monopoly Madness 213
Chapter 17 From Bad to Bizarre 225
Chapter 18 A War, Uprisings, and Then There Was One 235
Chapter 19 Life and Death and Love and Death 247
Chapter 20 Sudden Chaos 261
Chapter 21 Revolution 275
Chapter 22 Escape 287
Chapter 23 Smirnov with an "F" 303
Chapter 24 The End is a Beginning 317
Epilogue 327
Acknowledgments 339
Endnotes 343
Selected Bibliography 371
Index 375
What People are Saying About This
“The story of the Smirnov family is an operatic tour-de-force, and Linda Himelstein tells it with grace and passion.”
“Linda Himelstein has pulled off a remarkable storytelling feat.”
“To follow the lives of members of the Smirnov family in this vivid account is to experience the flow of Russian history from the 1830s until the present. ”