Most consumers don't spend an awful lot of time thinking about the innocent chocolate bar, but candy is an impressive $14 billion industry in America. Because so much money is at stake, a cutthroat attitude often pervades candy producers' thinking: As with cola, there's not a huge difference among the products offered by each company, so sales are based on extremely volatile, even arbitrary factors that necessitate a careful yet vigilant battle plan. Still, who would have guessed that the chocolate industry would be as secretive and sneaky as an entire military industrial complex? With The Emperors Of Chocolate, journalist Joël Glenn Brenner offers a rare look at the competitive and paranoid world of the country's two largest chocolate empires, Hershey and Mars. As Brenner makes clear, however, the task was anything but easy. Mars has a long history of mysterious silence, and it took years of nagging for her to get even a peep out of the company. Hershey was similarly reluctant to speak to the press, so concerned were its leaders and spokespeople that trade secrets would somehow fall into the hands of their adversaries. Even when each company does open up to Brenner, it's under the most unforthcoming of circumstances, forcing her to resort to the illuminating off-the-record help of several former and current employees. Most of her sources still feel compelled to retain a frustrating veil of secrecy, but what she does dig up is fascinating. Opening with a revealing tale of behind-the-scenes fighting between the two chocolate giants over whose heat-resistant candy would supply U.S. troops during the Gulf War, The Emperors Of Chocolate goes on to unveil a litany of remarkable battles and eccentric practices. On a broader level, the book also addresses the decline of family-owned candy manufacturers in a nation of (literally) faceless corporations. It's safe to say that after reading this behind-the-scenes exposé—in which a powerful PR machine operates like the CIA and people will do anything short of murder to get ahead—you'll never look at candy bars quite the same way again.