Bananas!: How The United Fruit Company Shaped the World

ISBN: 9781841958811

Title: Bananas!: How The United Fruit Company Shaped the World

Author: Peter Chapman

KDL Description:

From its nineteenth-century origins to its rise to success via the mass-marketing of the banana as the original fast food and its links to the U.S. government, an account of the rise and fall of United Fruit Company shows how the corporation blazed the trail of global capitalism while documenting its devastating impact on Central America’s “banana republics.”

Amazon Description:

In this gripping exploration of corporate manuevering and subterfuge, Peter Chapman shows how the importer United Fruit set the precedent for the institutionalized power and influence of today’s multinational companies. Bananas! is a sharp and lively account of the rise and fall of this infamous company, arguably the most controversial global corporation ever — from the jungles of Costa Rica to the dramatic suicide of its CEO, who leapt from an office on the forty-fourth floor of the Pan Am building in New York City.

From the marketing of the banana as the first fast food, to the company’s involvement in an invasion of Honduras, the Bay of Pigs crisis, and a bloody coup in Guatemala, Chapman weaves a dramatic tale of big business, political deceit, and outright violence to show how one company wreaked havoc in the “banana republics” of Central America, and how terrifyingly similar the age of United Fruit is to our age of rapid globalization.