In this episode 208, we visit with Gene Hoots, author of Going Down Tobacco Road: R.J. Reynolds’ Tobacco Empire: The Gold Leaf and North Carolina. Using his twenty–one years of experience working for the tobacco empire, financial analyst Gene Hoots details the rise and fall of R.J. Reynolds.
Charlotte Readers Podcast is sponsored by Charlotte Mecklenburg Library.
In this episode 208, we visit with Gene Hoots, author of Going Down Tobacco Road: R.J. Reynolds’ Tobacco Empire: The Gold Leaf and North Carolina. Using his twenty–one years of experience working for the tobacco empire, financial analyst Gene Hoots details the rise and fall of R.J. Reynolds.
Along with this history are universal business lessons. Tobacco is a controversial product, but the industry that created it is one of the most successful industries in America.
Critics said the book “tells a huge American story that needed telling,” and that it “achieves this rare balance between combining a huge but purely business/industry story with its deep human and cultural implications, giving texture, drama, and empathy to the reader.”
