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calsfoundation@cals.org
calsfoundation@cals.org
Bart Elmore Country Capitalism: How Corporations from the American South Remade Our Economy and the Planet
About the author:
Bart Elmore is professor of environmental history and a core faculty member of the Sustainability Institute at Ohio State University whose work focuses on the ecological footprint of large multinational firms. He is the author of the award-winning 2015 book Citizen Coke: The Making of Coca-Cola Capitalism, a global environmental history of the world’s biggest soft drink brand. From 2016 to 2018, he was a Carnegie Fellow and the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington, DC. He published his second book, Seed Money: Monsanto’s Past and the Future of Food, in 2021. He was also a recipient of the 2022 Dan David Prize, the largest history prize in the world.
About the book:
Country Capitalism: How Corporations from the American South Remade Our Economy and the Planet travels the rural roads running through the American South that led to our planet-changing global economy. Bart Elmore uses the histories of five Southern firms—Coca-Cola, Delta Airlines, Walmart, FedEx, and Bank of America—to investigate the environmental impact of our have-it-now, fly-by-night, buy-on-credit economy. Drawing on exclusive interviews with company executives, corporate archives, and other records, Elmore explores the historical, economic, and ecological conditions that gave rise to these five trailblazing corporations.