Bitter Brew: The Rise and Fall of Anheuser-Busch and America's Kings of Beer

“[An] Intoxicating reading. . . . This is a lurid, fascinating tale, which narrowly escapes the charge of being sensationalist thanks to its factual grounding and the significance of its subject—a family business that managed to dominate an industry but could not get its own dysfunction under control.” —Wall Street Journal

Stretching across three centuries, from the start of the Civil War through Prohibition to today, Bitter Brew is the engrossing, often scandalous saga of one of the wealthiest and most colorful dynasties in American commerce: the Busch family of St. Louis, Missouri, the founders of the legendary Anheuser-Busch company. The critically acclaimed journalist William Knoedelseder tells the story of how the Busch patriarchs turned a small brewery into a multibillion-dollar international corporation and transformed their product, Budweiser, into the iconic “King of Beers.” He paints a fascinating portrait of immense wealth and power accompanied by scandal, heartbreak, tragedy, and untimely death. A cautionary tale of prosperity, hubris, and loss, Bitter Brew is also a revealing chronicle of American progress and decline over the past 150 years.

“Bitter Brew deftly chronicles the contentious succession of kings in a uniquely American dynasty. You’ll never crack open a six again without thinking of this book.” —John Sayles, Director of Eight Men Out and author of A Moment in the Sun

“A thoroughly researched and thoughtfully-written book.” —Publishers Weekly