{"product_id":"9781439915912","title":"Charles E. Hires and the Drink that Wowed a Nation: The Life and Times of a Philadelphia Entrepreneur","description":"\u003cp\u003eIntroduced at the 1876 Centennial Exposition and powered by an historic advertising campaign, Hires Root Beer—launched 10 years before Coca-Cola—blazed the trail for development of the American soft drink industry. Its inventor, Charles Elmer Hires, has been described as “a tycoon with the soul of a chemist.” In addition to creating root beer, Hires, a devoted family man and a pillar of the Quaker community, became a leading importer of botanical commodities, an authority on the vanilla bean. Starting from scratch, he also built one of the world’s largest condensed milk companies.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eCharles E. Hires and the Drink that Wowed a Nation\u003c\/i\u003e chronicles the humble origin and meteoric business success of this extraordinary entrepreneur. Author Bill Double uses published interviews, correspondence, newspaper reports, magazine articles, financial data, and a small family archive to tell this story of native ingenuity. Here, the rough-hewn capitalism of the gilded age, the evolution of the neighborhood drugstore, the rise of advertising in creating mass markets, and the emerging temperance movement all come together in a biography that, well, fizzes with entrepreneurial spirit.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Temple University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47026266177776,"sku":"9781439915912","price":24.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781439915912_p0.jpg?v=1763787026","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781439915912","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}