Paperback: Heirs to a Band-Aid and baby-powder fortune, the Johnsons have enjoyed unimaginable wealth since Johnson and Johnson was founded in 1886 but their personal lives have been marred by bitter feuds, violent and costly divorces, sexual aberrations and myriad tragedies.
One of the most iconic American dynasties, the Johnsons have often mirrored the Kennedy clan's dark side. Their entrepreneurial prowess has brought them enormous power and success in business, but in private, their lives have been haunted by misfortune.
Now, in this scrupulously researched biography, New York Times bestselling author Jerry Oppenheimer places the Johnson and Johnson dynasty under a journalistic microscope, as he reveals the secrets behind their immense power, extraordinary wealth and provocative dramas in Crazy Rich (2013).
"They have been called perhaps the most dysfunctional family in the Fortune500. To be clear, these were not wicked people. Most, if not all, of the horrors they faced were attributable to the vast fortunes they had inherited and the psychological impact on them of all that unearned wealth," wrote the author in the Prologue.
There was "The General", the contemporary patriarch who humiliatingly fired his son as president of the family business, both dying of cancer soon after. Dynasty legal wars were rampant over wills, inheritances, paternity and even the word "spouse". One Johnson scion went through a $100 million divorce before his second marriage gave him the namesake he so desperately wanted. Another mindboggling case was ignited by the adult progeny of a Johnson senior over the $400 million he left his much younger wife, the family's former chambermaid, after divorcing his second wife, a suspected lesbian. New Jersey's highest court once took a subtle shot at the very litigious Johnson family, nothing that a case it was hearing "is one of the many such disputes involving trusts or trust property that have arisen within the Johnson family over the past three decades."
Johnson inherited wealth was immense. When Robert Wood Johnson Jr known as the General - Woody Johnson's grandfather - took the family owned, privately held Johnson and Johnson company public on the New York Stock Exchange on 24 September 1944, a block of one hundred shares sold for $3750. By the end of the twentieth century, those same shares reportedly were worth a whopping $12 million (not including dividends), and with splits had ballooned to 125 000 shares. Every Johnson dynasty member - past, present and future - became wealthy beyond anyone's imagination as the value soared in the open market. Many Johnsons never had to do much except live large.
From the founders - three relatively uneducated but ambitious brothers, Robert, James and Edward - in the late nineteenth century who brought the world scores of healthcare and first-aid products with the Red Cross as their logo, to the contemporary Johnsons, including the billionaire owner of the New York Jets, Robert Wood "Woody" Johnson IV, Oppenheimer explores how the family's riches have had a corrupting and toxic impact.
About the author: Jerry Oppenheimer is the New York Times bestselling author of unauthorized biographies of Hillary and Bill Clinton, Anna Wintour, Rock Hudson, Martha Stewart, Barbara Walters, Ethel Kennedy, Jerry Seinfeld, and the Hilton family. He has also worked in several different capacities as a journalist, including as an investigative reporter and a producer of television news programs and documentaries.
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