An explosive exposé of Samsung that “reads like a dynastic thriller, rolling through three generations of family intrigue, embezzlement, bribery, corruption, prostitution, and other bad behavior” (The Wall Street Journal).

Based on years of reporting on Samsung for The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, and Time from his base in South Korea, and his countless sources inside and outside the company, Geoffrey Cain offers a penetrating look behind the curtains of the biggest company nobody in America knows. Seen for decades in tech circles as a fast follower rather than an innovation leader, Samsung today has grown to became a market leader in the U.S. and around the globe. They have captured one quarter of the smart phone market and have been pushing the envelope on every front.

Forty years ago, Samsung was a rickety Korean agricultural conglomerate that produced sugar, paper, and fertilizer, located in a backward country with a third-world economy. But with the rise of the PC revolution, Chairman Lee Byung-chul began a bold experiment: to make Samsung a major supplier of computer chips. The multimillion-dollar plan was incredibly risky. But Lee, wowed by a young Steve Jobs, who sat down with the chairman to offer his advice, became obsessed with creating a tech empire. And in Samsung Rising, we follow Samsung behind the scenes as the company fought its way to the top of tech. It is one of Apple’s chief suppliers of technology critical to the iPhone, and its own Galaxy phone outsells the iPhone.

Today, Samsung employs 369,000 people (compared to Apple’s 80,000, and Google’s 48,000). The company’s revenues have grown more than forty times from that of 1987, and make up more than twenty percent of South Korea’s exports. Yet their disastrous recall of the Galaxy Note 7, with numerous reports of phones spontaneously bursting into flames, reveals the dangers of the company’s headlong attempt to overtake Apple at any cost.

A sweeping, insider account of the Korean company’s ongoing war against the likes of Google and Apple, Samsung Rising shows how a determined and fearless Asian competitor has become a force to be reckoned with.

“Cain’s writing is appropriately damning of Samsung’s failures and admiring of its achievements, providing a comprehensive look at one of the most secretive and consequential companies in the world.”
—The Verge

“Cain captures the drama of Samsung. . . . He pulls no punches, touching raw nerves of rivalries and repression and clashing egos in an account that’s unavoidably murky at times, but riveting current history.”
—Forbes

“Samsung Rising reads like a dynastic thriller, rolling through three generations of family intrigue, embezzlement, bribery, corruption, prostitution and other bad behavior. . . . Wonderfully informative.”
—The Wall Street Journal

“A gripping read . . . Cain knows his material.”
—Financial Times

“With Samsung Rising, Geoffrey Cain shines an incisive and entertaining light into the secretive world of the South Korean technology giant, whose ambitions and idiosyncrasies are shaping our digital lives in ways we probably can’t imagine.”
—Brad Stone, author of The Everything Store and The Upstarts

“Reads like a thriller, whipping us through the dramatic story of the world’s largest technology company.”
—Daniel Tudor, author of Korea: The Impossible Country

“An extraordinary work of narrative business reportage . . . With the flair of a novelist, Geoffrey Cain tells the story of Samsung’s meteoric rise.”
—Robert S. Boynton, author of The New New Journalism and The Invitation-Only Zone

“It’s often impossible to discern where Samsung ends and South Korea begins—and vice versa. Geoffrey Cain pulls back the curtain with this timely and uniquely intimate look at Korea Inc. in all its cacophonous wonder.”
—William Pesek, author of Japanization.