Take a Historic Walk Along Tobacco Road . . .If you invested one dollar in tobacco stocks in 1900, by 2014, you would have had an astonishing $6.3 million. For good or bad, researchers at the London School of Economics reported in 2015 that tobacco was the most successful industry in America from the turn of the century onward.Financial analyst Gene Hoots worked for tobacco empire R. J. Reynolds for twenty-one years. During that time, he saw the empire grow and then get destroyed by “barbarians” in 1989’s biggest leveraged buyout in history. But Gene knew there was a longer, more dramatic story that both led to and followed the historic buyout.Going Down Tobacco Road is a new look at how the “gold leaf” became king in North Carolina and its impact on robber barons, factory workers, farmers, and almost everyone else in the state. But it is also the story of an empire whose profitability from a controversial product brought untold riches to businesses, governments, and several million people and then caused its own destruction.The universal business lessons from this story about the rise, fall, and resurrection of an industrial giant apply to anyone who must allocate financial resources, no matter whether for a personal savings plan or a major business enterprise.