King of the Castle; The Making of a Dynasty: Seagram's and the Bronfman Empire

New York: Atheneum, 1979. Presumed First Printing. Hardcover. Good/Good. x, [2], 304, [2] pages. Occasional footnotes. Appendices. Index. Some front board weakness. DJ has some wear, soiling, edge tears and chips. Peter Charles Newman, CC, CD (born 10 May 1929) is a Canadian journalist and writer. Newman emigrated from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia to Canada in 1940 as a Jewish refugee. He has been a reporter for the Financial Post, served as editor of the Toronto Star, and was the longtime editor of Maclean's. He continues to write a column for the periodical. Newman is widely respected for his intimate knowledge and understanding of Canadian business leaders. His 1975 book, The Canadian Establishment, was widely acclaimed. Newman made his name as an author in the 1960s with the publication of two books: Renegade in Power: The Diefenbaker Years (1963), a study of the government of John George Diefenbaker that some say helped destroy the Tory leader's career, and The Distemper of Our Times (1968), an examination of Canadian politics during the era of Lester Pearson. In 1978 he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada and was promoted to the rank of Companion in 1990. He joined the Royal Canadian Navy reserve in 1947 as an Ordinary Seaman and later reached the rank of Captain, having served in the naval reserve for 50 years. In October 2012 he joined the faculty of the Royal Military College of Canada as its first journalist-in-residence. In this role he is involved with RMC's graduate and undergraduate programs and gives lectures on topics relating to business, politics and history. It is one of the world's great fortunes, the empire founded by Sam Bronfman and carried on through his family, a kingdom worth more than $7 billion nurtured on bootleg alcohol and sustained through decades of deals, scandals, legal explosions and intrafamily warfare. At its heart is the Seagram Company Ltd., the world's largest distilling operation, responsible for more than one million bottles of liquor per day sold in the U.S. alone, but its reach stretches far beyond that--to oil companies, hotels, mines, factories and real estate all over the world. Except that they are almost certainly richer and without a doubt more secretive, the Bronfmans have become the Rothschilds of the New World, and here at last is the extraordinary story of their lives, times and turbulent fortunes, chronicled by best-selling author Peter C. Newman. -- From publisher's description. This book attempts to document for the first time the controversial history and impressive influence of the supremely monied and infinitely complex family, the Bronfmans of Montreal and New York. They ranked among the non-Arab world's riches citizens. Mystery had been deliberately created to conceal the Bronfmans early career in Canadian bootlegging. In 1933, a Scottish distiller refused to join Seagram's in tackling the American market, so the Bronfmans raised $4 million and bought him out. Newman is at his best describing the Bronfmans themselves--particularly tyrannical Sam, browbeating everyone and craving acceptance by his colleagues. Sam Bronfman, always religious, turned his concern to Jewish causes--he headed the Canadian Jewish Congress for 23 years--and the family's story is also a story of Canada's Jewish community.