Overview

Barons is the story of seven corporate titans, their rise to power, and the consequences for everyone else. Take Mike McCloskey, chairman of Fair Oaks Farms. In a few short decades, he went from managing a modest dairy herd to running the Disneyland of agriculture. Mike benefited from deregulation of the American food industry, a phenomenon that has consolidated wealth in the hands of select tycoons, and along the way, hollowed out the nation's rural towns and local businesses. Along with Mike McCloskey, listeners will meet a secretive German family that took over the global coffee industry in less than a decade, relying on wealth traced back to the Nazis to gobble up countless independent roasters. And they will learn that in the food business, crime really does pay--especially when you can bribe and then double-cross the president of Brazil. These, and the other stories in this book, are simply examples of the monopolies and ubiquitous corruption that today define American food. The tycoons profiled are hardly unique: many other companies have manipulated our lax laws and failed policies for their own benefit, to the detriment of our neighborhoods, livelihoods, and our democracy itself. A fair, healthy, and prosperous food industry is possible--if we take back power from the barons who have robbed us of it.

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Austin Frerick is an expert on agricultural and antitrust policy. He worked at the Open Markets Institute, the U.S. Department of Treasury, and the Congressional Research Service before becoming a Fellow at Yale University. He is a seventh generation Iowan and first generation college graduate, with degrees from Grinnell College and the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Eric Schlosser is an American journalist and author known for investigative journalism. He is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Fast Food Nation and Command and Control, as well as Reefer Madness and Chew on This. His writing has appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, Rolling Stone, New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and Nation. He was executive producer of the Oscar-winning major motion picture There Will be Blood as well as producer and co-producer of critically acclaimed documentary films. Schlosser studied American history at Princeton University and earned a graduate degree in British imperial history from Oxford. He lives in California with his wife, Shauna Jean Redford, and has two children. Stephen Bel Davies has recorded over a hundred titles in association with Audible Studios, Deyan Audio, Brilliance, and Tantor. He has narrated books by several New York Times bestselling authors, including Jeffrey Toobin, Jennifer Roberson, Piers Anthony, Walter Kern, J. A. Redmerski, and A. G. Riddle. He was trained at The Juilliard School Drama Division.

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