AN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR “Mr. Wright’s imagined history of the rise and fall of the sugary drink empire is so robust and recognizable that you might feel nostalgic for the taste of a soda you’ve never had.” – Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK BY Parade • Cosmopolitan • Town & Country • AARP • InStyle • Garden & Gun • Vol. 1 BrooklynThe story of a family. Cosmopolitan • Town & Country • AARP • InStyle • Garden & Gun • Vol. 1 Brooklyn
The story of a family.
The story of an empire.
The story of a nation.
Moving from Mississippi to Paris to New York and back again, a saga of family, ambition, passion, and tragedy that brings to life one unforgettable Southern dynasty—the Forsters, founders of the world’s first major soft-drink company—against the backdrop of more than a century of American cultural history.
The child of immigrants, Houghton Forster has always wanted more—from his time as a young boy in Mississippi, working twelve-hour days at his father’s drugstore; to the moment he first laid eyes on his future wife, Annabelle Teague, a true Southern belle of aristocratic lineage; to his invention of the delicious fizzy drink that would transform him from tiller boy into the founder of an empire, the Panola Cola Company, and entice a youthful, enterprising nation entering a hopeful new age.
Now the heads of a preeminent American family spoken about in the same breath as the Hearsts and the Rockefellers, Houghton and Annabelle raise their four children with the expectation they’ll one day become world leaders. The burden of greatness falls early on eldest son Montgomery, a handsome and successful politician who has never recovered from the horrors and heartbreak of the Great War. His younger siblings Ramsey and Lance, known as the “infernal twins,” are rivals not only in wit and beauty, but in their utter carelessness with the lives and hearts of others. Their brother Harold, as gentle and caring as the twins can be cruel, is slowed by a mental disability—and later generations seem equally plagued by misfortune, forcing Houghton to seriously consider who should control the company after he’s gone.
An irresistible tour de force of original storytelling, American Pop blends fact and fiction, the mundane and the mythical, and utilizes techniques of historical reportage to capture how, in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s words, “families are always rising and falling in America,” and to explore the many ways in which nostalgia can manipulate cultural memory—and the stories we choose to tell about ourselves.
more
Spectacular… an American saga of one man’s ambition, the woman who stoked it, and the family whose complex identity it became. Snowden Wright takes us into the heart of the deep South with insight, sophistication, and humor. What a ride!
You’ll be up all night reading American Pop; rich, Mississippians loose on the world, committing hi-jinks, and with a lovely satisfying ending. A great read.
American Pop, I found was an excellent read that kept me turning pages, as I found myself wishing it wouldn’t end. The Forsters owners of a soft drink empire (Panola Cola) are the focus characters of the story. My first indication that I was enjoying the book was it’s likeness to a world I was familiar with. The Forsters (like the Kennedys) are a dynasty, much like their Panola Cola is much like the soft drinks that are popular worldwide. I also found that for all their prestige and money, they were in many ways very relatable characters, with dreams of success and the failures, pains and dissolutions that life has a tendency to heave on us all.
Snowden Wright does an excellent job of giving us a view of the darker, seedier (almost gothic) side of the affluent South, which reminded me of “The Garden of Good and Evil”. With plenty of enemies and skeletons in the closet American Pop moves at a great pace (due to it’s short style chapters).
I would be negligent to not mention that amazingly throughout the story Snowden manages to maintain a sense of humor that is subtle, poignant and undeniable funny.
American Pop (at least for me) is a precautionary story, that not only tells the story of the rise and fall of an empire and it’s perpetrators, but reminds us of the pitfalls of power, money and untethered goals, while managing to not take itself too seriously.
An absolute recommendation for anyone who enjoys a good read regardless of the genre.
In Snowden Wright’s excellent novel, past and present blend to reveal a particularly American story of one family’s ascent and fall. Like Panola Cola, the soft drink that makes the Forster family fortune, American Pop is supremely unique and immensely satisfying.
It was very hard to follow this book. The characters were all over the place and so was the time line.
It was interesting.
I had such high expectations for this book based on the description and reviews. However, I found the book completely contrived. The story was more like a soap opera as the characters ups and downs in life….. This was a real disappointment.
I didn’t like this book. It could have been a good story, or even two or three good stories; but it was so hard to follow, jumping between characters and time periods. First it was nineteen hundred, then world two, back to the twenties, then world war one, then the sixties, impossible to keep straight what happened to who when. No real plot line, just random vingets of a rich families life.
Didn’t care for it. Thought it was kind of dumb…sorry to author, but just didn’t do anything for me
Big disappointment.
The House of Forster is built on bubbles; watching each wealth-addled generation try not to blow the family fortune and/or disgrace its name provides not only excellent Southern Gothic fun but a panoramic tour of the American Century.
A sweeping account of how a family fortune is always variably defined by its different generations… Snowden Wright’s grand and generous American Pop all-too-convincingly renders his American dynasty a mere museum piece in the end, revealing along the way a tough-as-nails sensibility that I much admired.
American Pop captures the best and worst of the twentieth century… Wright shows us first what it means to belong to a family; then he shows us what it costs to belong to a country. A remarkable achievement.