This second volume of the "biography" of America's largest privately held company picks up where Wayne Broehl's highly acclaimed Cargill: Trading the World's Grain left off. The year is 1960; Cargill has evolved from a pioneering grain trading firm to a giant whose enterprises include milling, seed production, livestock feeds, insurance, specialty steel products, metals trading, and even the construction of its own Mississippi River barges.

At this crucial point in the company's life, the first non-family CEO and only the fourth in the firm's history, Erwin Kelm, is tapped for the company's top post. For the next seventeen years, the "Kelm era" is characterized by continued growth and diversification in the face of changing times and an unpredictable national and international scene.

This is a story of the Kelm years, but it is also a narrative history of an American tradition - growth, adaptation, and success despite the stresses of internal, national, and world events.