In this book, Peter Chapman shows how the pioneering example of the
importer United Fruit set the precedent for the institutionalized greed of
today's multinational companies. The story has its source in United Fruit's
19th Century beginnings in the jungles of Costa Rica. It moves via the
mass-marketing of the banana as the original fast food, United Fruit's
involvement in an invasion of Honduras, a massacre in columbia and a bloody
coup in Guatemala, and the very public suicide on Park Avenue of the
company's chairman, Eli Black, in the 1970s. From its bullying business
practices to its covert links to the US government, United Fruit blazed the
trail of global capitalism through the 20th Century. Chapman weaves a
dramatic tale of big business, lies and power to show how one company
pioneered the growth of globalization.