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The King Of Vodka: The Story Of Pyotr Smirnov And The Upheaval Of An Empire (2009)

by Linda Himelstein(Favorite Author)

3.42 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

0060855894 (ISBN13: 9780060855895)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

HarperBusiness

review 1: Born a serf in a Russian village in 1831, Pyotr Smirnov became one of the richest men in Russia. Not only a vodka entrepreneur, he was a brilliant innovator in marketing strategies. However, like many wealthy men, his over-indulged children were not up to carrying on his legacy, especially in the face of the Russian Revolution. The book is a history of the rise of Smirnoff as an international brand as much as it is a biography of its founder. Although not a very thrilling story, the impressive amount of research makes it engaging.
review 2: This book does talk much about how vodka is made; it's more of a company history...but of an unusual company. Basically, Smirnov vodka was created by one guy, an ambitious former serf in the half century before the Russi... morean revolution. But when vodka finally came to America, (and it was Smirnoff by then), it was just the name and maybe some of the techniques licensed to a guy in Conneticut by the founder's third son (who no longer had any legal role in the company, such as it was by then). So yeah, Smirnoff vodka: made in America since 1934. Not a bad book, but not a commodity history about the spirit itself. less

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