The book spends a long time on the origin of this all American company. It also develops well the very successful 16 year tenure of Roberto Goizeta from 1981 until his surprising death in 1997. It does a good job of covering the miserable and short tenure of Douglas Ivester from 1997 to 1999. He made so many mistakes within such a short time, that he was forced out before he could do any more damage.
Unfortunately, Hays hardly covers the valiant efforts of Daft, CEO from 1999 until February 2004 to turnaround the company. Thus, her criticism of Coke's management leadership is already two CEOs and nearly four years behind as the book just hits the stores. For this explicit reason, I would pass it up.
Instead, I recommend a similar but far superior book written by another top notch NY Times journalist: The End of Detroit: How the Big Three lost their grip on the American Car Market written by Micheline Maynard. Maynard's analysis is far sharper, current, and relevant than is Hays' in The Real Thing.
In some ways Hays book is a sequel. At its best it tells the story of what happened to the giant syrup manufacturer after 1990. But the main problem with the book is Hays insistence on a non-linear style that works poorly when presenting history. She often starts a story and then stop--moving on to pick up another thread. Sometimes she comes back to finish the first thread, often she just mentions it in passing in another thread. The result is a convoluted, hard to follow story of Coke in the 1990s. Perhaps it is a refreshing change from the straight forward "and then this happened" approach, but it makes for difficult reading.
Hays does a good job researching, she obviously spoke with many key people in Coke's world (or used other sources). Often though the book reads like a magazine article, long on colorful quotes and interesting asides, short on a central narrative drive.
If you have read Pendergrast and want to get updated (through the turn of the century at least) then Hays will do the job. But if you know only vague details about Coke then you should start with For God, Country and Coca-Cola.
To her credit, Hays demonstrates meticulous care and commendable circumspection when explaining that several of the problems which the Coca-Cola Company encountered during the past two decades were by no means unique as its globalization initiatives proceeded, given internal upheavals in emerging markets and currency devaluations over which it had little (if any) control. It was also among the corporate victims of anti-Americanism which, if anything, has become even more virulent during the last 12-18 months. Nonetheless, one of her central themes is that the Coca-Cola Company was as relentlessly committed to a defective "formula" for growth worldwide as it was protective of its super-secret formula for syrup. Meanwhile, the company weakened long-term, mutually beneficial relationships with many of its independent bottlers. Some of the most engrossing material in her book examines a number of executive-suite dramas (and melodramas) which suggest, to me at least, an inability and/or unwillingness among senior managers to affirm in their conduct certain values with which the company had once been so closely identified, notably in areas such as corporate good citizenship and strategic partnerships based on trust.
Recent developments suggest that current CEO Douglas N. Daft and his senior management team continue to struggle with many of the aforementioned problems and, through their determined efforts, the Coca-Cola Company is beginning to solve them. Hays observes that "They knew the formula. They had done it before. They would just have to do it again." Hopefully they will succeed, guided and informed by lessons learned during recent years...lessons which are specified or implied in this riveting account by Hays of "truth and power" in a company which, for more than a century, has been synonymous with so many of the "best and brightest" achievements in the history of American free enterprise.