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Citizen Coke: The Making of Coca-Cola Capitalism. By Bartow J. elmore. new york: W. W. norton and company, 2015. 432 pp., $27.95, hardback, ISBN 978-0-393-24112-9.
Bartow J. elmore has written a new, sometimes brilliant, occasionally frustrating, business and environmental history of coca-cola. This is not a Whiggish account of the softdrink company's global conquest. nor is it a straightforward story of imperial plunder. it is not an updated account of coke's branding savvy either. elmore does not even try to decode the secret formula. instead, he tells a story of coke as a model of post-Fordist capitalism, where firms stayed light and nimble and outsourced as much of their costs and operations as possible.
Coke, according to elmore, was, then, the precursor by almost six decades of current global titans nike and apple. unlike its contemporaries uS Steel or general Motors, the atlanta syrup maker did not pour money into material...