The Bronfmans

by Nicholas Faith

The Bronfman family story is an improbable saga of larger-than-life personalities and bitter rivalries. "Mr. Sam," the man who made drinking whiskey respectable in the United States, built Seagram into the first worldwide liquor empire in the 1950s and 1960s. After Sam's death in 1971, his oldest son Edgar masterminded a major coup when he translated a small investment in oil made by his father into a 25% stake in the mighty DuPont company. But in the 1990s, Edgar allowed his second son, Edgar Jr., to indulge his ambition to become a media tycoon. He reinvested the DuPont stake in Universal, the film and theme-park empire, then bought Polygram Records. But at the same time, he remained in charge of the liquor business, which started to fall apart. Then came the final disaster, when the increasingly divided family sold out to the empire builder of the French conglomerate Vivendi.--From publisher description