Politics
17 Things You Didn’t Know About the Koch Brothers
David and Charles Koch (AP Photos)
(The Washington Post) – 2014 is the Year of the Kochs, apparently. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and other Democrats are working feverishly to cast the billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch as the symbols of big money run amok in politics. And there are a slew of new books coming out that delve deeply into the lives of the conservative donors and their compatriots.
The first, “Sons of Wichita: How the Koch Brothers Became America’s Most Powerful and Private Dynasty,” came out Tuesday. It was written by Daniel Schulman, a senior editor in the Washington bureau of the liberal publication Mother Jones, and centers on the fraught family dynamics that shaped the four Koch brothers (yes, there are four).
So far, the Kochs are taking a cautious posture toward the tome, which revisits a lot of painful family history.
“We have been aware of Mr. Schulman’s book project since January of 2012 and had minimal participation since that time, mostly involving some fact-checking,” Koch Industries spokesman Robert Tappan said in a statement. “Neither Charles Koch nor David Koch were interviewed for this book. We are in the process of reviewing Mr. Schulman’s book and are reserving judgment at this time.”
After getting an early copy and staying up late reading it, we pulled out some of the most interesting tidbits and revelatory details. The 17 best are below.
