The Kelloggs: The Battling Brothers of Battle Creek

The Kelloggs: The Battling Brothers of Battle Creek

***2017 National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist for Nonfiction***

"What's more American than Corn Flakes?"Â â€”Bing Crosby

From the much admired medical historian (â€œMarkel shows just how compelling the medical history can beâ€â€”Andrea Barrett) and author of An Anatomy of Addiction (â€œAbsorbing, vividâ€â€”Sherwin Nuland, The New York Times Book Review, front page)â€”the story of Americaâ€™s empire builders: John and Will Kellogg.
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John Harvey Kellogg was one of Americaâ€™s most beloved physicians; a best-selling author, lecturer, and health-magazine publisher; founder of the Battle Creek Sanitarium; and patron saint of the pursuit of wellness. His youngest brother, Will, was the founder of the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company, which revolutionized the mass production of food and what we eat for breakfast.
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In The Kelloggs, Howard Markel tells the sweeping saga of these two extraordinary men, whose lifelong competition and enmity toward one another changed Americaâ€™s notion of health and wellness from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries, and who helped change the course of American medicine, nutrition, wellness, and diet.
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The Kelloggs were of Puritan stock, a family that came to the shores of New England in the mid-seventeenth century, that became one of the biggest in the county, and then renounced it all for the religious calling of Ellen Harmon White, a self-proclaimed prophetess, and James White, whose new Seventh-day Adventist theology was based on Christian principles and sound body, mind, and hygiene rulesâ€”Ellen called it â€œhealth reform.â€
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The Whites groomed the young John Kellogg for a central role in the Seventh-day Adventist Church and sent him to Americaâ€™s finest Medical College. Kelloggâ€™s main medical focusâ€”and Americaâ€™s number one malady: indigestion (Walt Whitman described it as â€œthe great American evilâ€).
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Markel gives us the life and times of the Kellogg brothers of Battle Creek: Dr. John Harvey Kellogg and his world-famous Battle Creek Sanitarium medical center, spa, and grand hotel attracted thousands actively pursuing health and well-being. Among the guests: Mary Todd Lincoln, Amelia Earhart, Booker T. Washington, Johnny Weissmuller, Dale Carnegie, Sojourner Truth, Henry Ford, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and George Bernard Shaw. And the presidents he advised: Taft, Harding, Hoover, and Roosevelt, with first lady Eleanor. The brothers Kellogg experimented on malt, wheat, and corn meal, and, tinkering with special ovens and toasting devices, came up with a ready-to-eat, easily digested cereal they called Corn Flakes.
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As Markel chronicles the Kelloggsâ€™ fascinating, Magnificent Ambersonsâ€“like ascent into the pantheon of American industrialists, we see the vast changes in American social mores that took shape in diet, health, medicine, philanthropy, and food manufacturing during seven decadesâ€”changing the lives of millions and helping to shape our industrial age.
Country USA
Manufacturer Vintage
Binding Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate 2017-08-08
Format Kindle eBook

Country	USA
Manufacturer	Vintage
Binding	Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate	2017-08-08
Format	Kindle eBook

The Kelloggs: The Battling Brothers of Battle Creek

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