Synopsis
This title exposes that an outlandish and secretive clan controls the massive Mars Kingdom with an iron fist. Headed for battle over succession, the Mars family is a bizarre collection of private, controlling and unusual charecters, together worth more than $12 billion. Although Mars headquarters is just three miles from the CIA, its nickname is The Kremlim due to the company's secretive and ruthless management.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 1995-05-01 |
| Size | | Height: | 9.3 in | | Width: | 6.3 in | | Thickness: | 1.0 in | | Weight: | 19.2 oz |
Publisher's Note
Exposing the hidden story beneath the sugar coating in the Mars candy company, the truth about a bizarre family dynasty that rules with an iron fist includes ruthless management, incredible penny-pinching, and managers bailing out by the dozens. IP.
Industry Reviews
In her latest work, Pottker (Dear Ann, Dear Abby: An Unauthorized Biography of Ann Landers and Abigail Van Buren, LJ 10/15/87) looks at the history and current-day practices of Mars, Inc., one of America's largest private companies. She sees a secretive and tight-fisted organization run by the eccentric and overly cautious brothers Forrest J. Mars Jr. and John F. Mars. As a result, Pottker had to rely on public documents and interviews with former employees in constructing her account, which serves as both a popular history of the company and an expos? of the Mars family. Her book, the first on the subject, provides a good popular history of the company and insight into the candy-making industry but fails to deliver the intrigue its title promises. Pottker has uncovered examples of the family's ineffective leadership and dysfunctionality, but they do not seem to amount to a crisis. Recommended only where there is interest. Mark McCullough, Heterick Lib., Ohio Northern Univ., Ada
Adams
Part tabloid fare, part pop history, this patchwork portrait of the giant Mars candy company Milky Way, Snickers, Three Musketeers, M&Ms and its fabulously wealthy, intensely secretive founding family takes a bite out of the firm's reputation by washing some dirty linen in public: ``Not even partitions separate the fifty-odd headquarters associates, who must keep their voices down when talking on the telephone to avoid complete babel.... Few desks have computers, for writing memos is against corporate policy.'' After interviewing former employees, family friends and competitors at Hershey, Nestl? and so on, Pottker (Dear Ann and Dear Abby) tells how polio-stricken Midwest schoolboy Frank Mars, spellbound, watched his mother's candy-making magic, then failed at three businesses as an adult before launching the Milky Way candy bar in 1923 and an eventual worldwide food conglomerate. This business saga has a tyrannical crown prince who waited too long in the wings and died young, leaving his sons pitted against one another for company control; a profligate stepmother; a self-indulgent daughter; and a wealth of profit-making ideas, including the promotion of certain sweets as good for the teeth. He who snickers last... (Aug.)
Bernstein
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