Thomas Ultican recommends Kochland as far and away the best book of 2019.
He begins:
This may be the finest book thus far in the twenty-first century. Kochland; The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America is the second book by former agribusiness reporter for the Associated Press, Christopher Leonard. His first book, The Meat Racket; The Secret Takeover of America’s Food Business received rave reviews; however, Kochland is uniquely special. It is an economic history of America since 1967 that shows the deep changes in our economy that have given rise to a new kind of capitalism. Kochland is told through the lens of Koch Industries whose “annual revenue is larger than that of Facebook, Goldman Sachs, and US Steel combined.”
Leonard weaves an epic tale of brilliance, philosophical intransigence, greed and ruthlessness. Over almost 600 pages, this enjoyable read clearly elucidates many of the troubling outcomes from the last 50 years like the rolling blackouts in California and the destruction of the labor movement.
Fred Koch, the family patriarch, graduated in Chemical Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1922. In 1927, he won a patent for an improved petroleum refining process. Do to legal issues surrounding his patent, Fred ended up working in Stalin’s Russia between 1929 and 1932. This experience informed his extreme anti-communist views. He later joined with Robert Welch and a group of businessmen to establish the virulently anti-communist John Birch Society. In 1960, he published the pamphlet “A Businessman Looks at Communism” in which he claimed that the National Education Association was a communist front organization and that public school books were filled with pro-communist propaganda.
In 1961 Fred convinced his son Charles to leave his new job at Arthur D. Little, Inc. and come back to Wichita to work for the family business. Charles went to work there after an impressive career at MIT earning a BS in general engineering 1957, an MS in nuclear engineering 1958 and an MS in Chemical Engineering 1960.
Kochland is also the story of Charles Koch. In 1966, after five years working for his father, he became the CEO of the company then known as Rock Island Oil & Refining Company. After his father Fred died in 1967, Charles took a disparate set of assets – a cattle ranch, a minority share in an oil refinery and a gas gathering business – and stitched them together into the company the family renamed Koch Industries as a tribute to their father. Today it is the second largest privately held corporation in the world. Largest.org lists Cargill, the corporation headquartered in Minnesota and founded in 1865, as the world’s largest privately held company with revenue of $114.7 billion. Koch Industries revenue for the same year came in at $110 billion.
Charles Koch is today worth more than $60 billion, as is his brother’s widow, Julia Flesher Koch.
Couldn’t they just enjoy their riches and leave our institutions and our lives alone?
Why crush democratic institutions like public schools, on which the vast majority of children and families depend?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Obviously brilliance of mind doesn’t bring kindness or compassion.
……
“We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year’s Day.”– Edith —-Lovejoy Pierce
“There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth… not going all the way, and not starting.”
-– Buddha
“Charles went to work there after an impressive career at MIT”
What a surprise that he was “educated” at MIT, which seems to be a veritable magnet for pond scum (including sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein)
That was not a response to your post. Not sure how it got there.
and that truly dangerous truth: so many who venture about ten steps on the journey and then stop, take money, and call themselves “experts”
The best book of 2020:
Thank you!!!!
I believe that SLAYING GOLIATH will change the national conversation about education reform.
It was inspired by the brave teachers of West Virginia, the first to unite and strike for better conditions for teaching and learning.
Our nation’s premier historian of education writes a stirring RECENT HISTORY of the resistance to privatization of the nation’s schools. It’s history, yes, but more than that, it’s a celebration of and manual for resistance to the greed undermining our democratic institutions. Like Uncle Tom’s Cabin or Silent Spring, this is the sort of book that changes things.
Ravitch, the anti-Koch antidote.
It is a book which I intend to read shortly, as the author Ms. Ravitch usually provides meaningful forward moving ideas.
I’m eagerly awaiting the book’s release. Agree with you Bob, Diane’s NPE, books, blog, connections and speaking engagements are significant to the battle against the Koch plague.