Citizen Coors- Dan Baum

This book documents the Coors legacy in Golden, Colorado. To think it all started with the German immigrant who wanted to start a brewery. The Coors family diversified to also open a malt house, grow their own barley, create a ceramics plant and are the inventors of the modern day aluminum can (steel was used before). Believe it or not, most of these spin-offs were in an effort to exercise complete control of the quality and flavor of the beer. They even went as far as changing the weather (spraying the air with salt to induce rain) on their barley fields during times of drought and bending a river to divert floodwaters from drowning their brewery. I was recently in Golden and the Coor's property is sprawling. The book is longish and took me forever, but I definitely recommend it to the curious types who like to know a little bit about everything like me.