Overview

Tells the story of a successful company that forever changed how Americans shop and what Americans eat. This book shows how George and John Hartford took over their father's business and reshaped it again and again, turning it into a vertically integrated behemoth that paved the way for every big-box retailer to come.

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9780809051434

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Reviews

Praise for The Great A&P and the Struggle for Small Business in America Mr. Levinson has written an absorbing history of one company's amazing rise--and what such success means in a nation with conflicting ideals about big business. It is more than a rich business history; it is a mirror to our own conflicting wants and visions of who and what we should be. -- The New York Times Mr. Levinson writes engagingly, and he exhibits no overt political brief. Anyone with a common-sense grasp of business practices will find the author's points clearly and fairly presented. -- The Wall Street Journal Levinson, who has burrowed deep in the archives, makes this story clear and compelling--and shows why A&P was both a boon to consumers and, in the words of an FDR-era federal prosecutor, 'a gigantic blood sucker.' Shades of Walmart? -- The Atlantic [A] book about a by-gone era that I enjoyed was The Great A&P and the Struggle for Small Business in America by Marc Levinson. It is about the rise and fall of the A&P grocery chain, once the largest retailer in the world, with 15,000 stores, and renowned for its high quality and low prices . . . But this is more than an economic story. It is a human story about a family that dedicated itself to making its business the best it could be--and how the death of the last member of that family was followed by A&P's decline into oblivion. --Thomas Sowell, Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow on Public Policy, Hoover Institution [A] superb business study and an entertaining read. -- The Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY) <p> The fleeting nature of success in business--even for companies that revolutionized their sectors--is among the many useful lessons of this book. A&P's legacy is apparent every time we set food in a modern grocery store, even if the company itself long ago fell victim to many of the forces it unleashed. -- The News Tribune (Tacoma, WA) <br> Levinson makes it read like a novel . . . A great studyo

Praise for The Great A&P and the Struggle for Small Business in America Mr. Levinson has written an absorbing history of one company's amazing rise--and what such success means in a nation with conflicting ideals about big business. It is more than a rich business history; it is a mirror to our own conflicting wants and visions of who and what we should be. -- The New York Times Mr. Levinson writes engagingly, and he exhibits no overt political brief. Anyone with a common-sense grasp of business practices will find the author's points clearly and fairly presented. -- The Wall Street Journal Levinson, who has burrowed deep in the archives, makes this story clear and compelling--and shows why A&P was both a boon to consumers and, in the words of an FDR-era federal prosecutor, 'a gigantic blood sucker.' Shades of Walmart? -- The Atlantic [A] book about a by-gone era that I enjoyed was The Great A&P and the Struggle for Small Business in America by Marc Levinson. It is about the rise and fall of the A&P grocery chain, once the largest retailer in the world, with 15,000 stores, and renowned for its high quality and low prices . . . But this is more than an economic story. It is a human story about a family that dedicated itself to making its business the best it could be--and how the death of the last member of that family was followed by A&P's decline into oblivion. --Thomas Sowell, Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow on Public Policy, Hoover Institution [A] superb business study and an entertaining read. -- The Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY) <p> The fleeting nature of success in business--even for companies that revolutionized their sectors--is among the many useful lessons of this book. A&P's legacy is apparent every time we set food in a modern grocery store, even if the company itself long ago fell victim to many of the forces it unleashed. -- The News Tribune (Tacoma, WA) <br> Levinson makes it read like a novel . . . A great studyt

Author Information

Marc Levinson has a gift for discovering business history stories that cut to the heart of how industries are transformed. He did so brilliantly with The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger, which was short-listed for the 2006 Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award.

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