The extraordinary account of how the secretive Koch Industries became one of the largest private companies in the world.
Koch Industries, the sprawling industrial conglomerate owned by Charles and David Koch, specializes in the kinds of stunningly profitable businesses that undergird every aspect of modern life: it controls the nitrogen fertilizer that puts food on your table, the gasoline that powers your car, the fibers in your clothes, the building materials that make your homes and offices, and the microchips that drive your life online. The company’s annual revenue is larger than that of Facebook, Goldman Sachs, and US Steel combined, and together the two brothers are worth more than Bill Gates or Warren Buffet.
Yet few Americans know how Koch got so big or the costs of its unrivaled success. Just as Steve Coll told the story of globalization through ExxonMobil and Andrew Ross Sorkin told the story of Wall Street excess through Too Big to Fail, Christopher Leonard uses Koch’s ascent to tell the story of modern corporate America.