Review: Frothy 'Bitter Brew' covers Busch empire
- Book builds upon pre-InBev tome about the family, 'Under the Influence'
- Saga of the Busch empire constitutes a real-life soap opera
- Some successors of founder became imperious execs, drug abusers, even murderers
When, four years ago, the Busch family lost control of the beer company it had founded in the middle of the 1800s, it seemed certain a book would emerge from the wreckage.
A couple of decades earlier, two reporters from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper had researched the Busch family and its beer dynasty headquartered in the city known as the gateway to the American West.
Peter Hernon and Terry Ganey eventually turned that research into the 1991 book Under the Influence, an unauthorized account that arguably qualifies as one of the most skillful corporate histories ever published.
The details are abundant about how the company's Budweiser brand became accepted as "the king of beers." The spinoff marketing tools of Anheuser-Busch, most notably the specially bred Clydesdale show horses and the St. Louis Cardinals Major League Baseball team (purchased in the mid-1950s by Anheuser-Busch), provided enough material for books devoted entirely to the family's evolution.
The Hernon-Ganey book would be a hard act to follow. But an updated version made sense, because the name Anheuser-Busch no longer identified the multinational corporation. A hostile takeover in 2008 had been accomplished by InBev, an alcoholic drink upstart behemoth with headquarters in Belgium and financial control exercised by Brazilian tycoons, especially cost-cutting fanatic Carlos Brito, the chief executive officer.
Now William Knoedelseder, a former reporter at the Los Angeles Times and author of a previous book about organized crime's infiltration of the music industry has completed that updated book, titled Bitter Brew: The Rise and Fall of Anheuser Busch and America's King of Beers.
Really, what author could resist? The hostile takeover of Anheuser-Busch, its diminished presence in St. Louis (and the rest of the United States), the immense profitability of InBev, and the changes in the character of iconic beer brands add up to a compelling business saga.
Even more, the continuing saga of the Busch family through five generations in the United States constitutes a real-life soap opera so outsized—and so tragic—that no author could make it boring.
Fathers and sons battled each other. Brothers and cousins undercut each other. The women in the mix sometimes attained personal wealth, but at great cost to their mental and physical health.
The German immigrant to St. Louis who started the brewing dynasty, Adolphus Busch, could not have imagined in his wildest dreams or his worst nightmare how well his descendants would build the company into a dominant industry force and how poorly they would conduct their personal lives, existences that can perhaps most accurately be summarized as "reckless."
The successors of Adolphus—August A. Busch, August Busch Jr. (aka Gussie), August Busch III and August Busch IV plus their spawn—would become imperious corporate bosses, aggressive executives when challenged by competitors such as Miller Brewing Co. They would become abusers of alcohol and drugs, philanderers, and even murderers who got away with their crimes.
If the book seems salacious in chapter after chapter, it is because Knoedelseder could not responsibly ignore the raw material from his extensive research. Quite a bit of that research, by the way, derives from the Hernon-Ganey book.
Quite a bit of that research, by the way, derives from the Hernon-Ganey book. For readers whose thirst for Anheuser-Busch lore is not quenched by Knoedelseder's account, "Under the Influence" is now available as an electronic book. Co-author Ganey has updated it with material that includes the hostile takeover by InBev and sensational new information about Busch family members.
Weinberg is the author of eight nonfiction books. He resides in Columbia, Mo., about 100 miles from the original Anheuser-Busch brewery.