Summary: Publisher Summary 1 Documents the career of one of the world's most influential wine critics, describing his everyday American childhood, the hard work and determination that shaped the course of his successes, and his contributions to the world of wine buying and consumption. Reprint.   Publisher Summary 2 Documents the career of one of the world's most influential wine critics, describing his everyday American childhood, the hard work that shaped the course of his successes, and his contributions to the world of wine buying and consumption.   Publisher Summary 3 This is the story of how an American lawyer caused a revolution in the way wines around the globe are made, sold, and talked about. Parker's influential newsletter, The Wine Advocate, exerts the single most significant influence on consumers' wine-buying habits and trends, and impacts the way wine is made in every wine-producing country in the world. To his fans, Parker is part enthusiastic sensualist and part consumer crusader. To his enemies, he is a self-appointed wine judge bent on reducing the meaning of wine to a two-digit number. The man who now rules the world of wine has been the focus of both adulation and death threats. He rose to his pinnacle of power by means of the traditional American virtues of hard work, determination, and integrity--coupled with an unshakeable ego and a maniacal obsession with a beverage that aspires to a seductive art form.--From publisher description.   Publisher Summary 4 This is the story of how an American lawyer raised on Coca-Cola caused a revolution in the way wines around the globe are made, sold, and talked about. The world's most influential wine critic, Robert M. Parker, Jr., has dominated the international wine community for the last quarter century, embodying the triumph of American taste. Using Parker's story as a springboard, author Elin McCoy offers an authoritative and unparalleled insider's view of the eccentric personalities, bitter feuds, controversies, and secrets of the wine world. She explains how reputations are made and how and why critics agree and disagree, and she tracks the startling ways wines are judged, promoted, made, and sold -- while painting a fascinating portrait of a modern-day cultural colossus who revolutionized the way the world thinks about wine.