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Hersheys Extraordinary Life of Wealth, Empire and Utopian Dreams, by Michael DAntonio (Simon Schuster; 305 pages; 25) Show More Show Less.

In doing so, he paints a portrait of a benevolent tyrant who was equal parts ego-driven titan (everything he created bore his name, including the company town he built from the ground up), tireless mad scientist (although he was an astute businessman, he seemed happiest in the laboratory, experimenting with ingredients for new and often times terribly misguided confections) and blindly committed utopian dreamer (the model of progressive capitalism, he left his entire fortune to the school for orphaned boys that he and his wife founded).

Instead, he presents the evidence, drawn mainly from newspaper accounts from the time and several unpublished manuscripts written while Hershey was alive, allowing the reader to decide.

And while the 305-page offering is skimpy by standards of todays big biographies, the author does an admirable job of making certain that every word counts.

One leaves the work with a fairly detailed view of both the man and the times in which he lived.

Idle Chocolate Tycoon Trial Revolution Was

Like Henry Ford, Andrew Carnegie and other great capitalists, Hershey had the good fortune to begin his business at a moment when the industrial revolution was making the mass production of products cheap and efficient.

Concurrently, the emerging middle class was happily using its increasing wealth to become something that we now take for granted: brand-conscious customers, the precursors to todays culture of conspicuous consumers.

His sidebars on the advent of marketing, the rise of labor unions and the development of conglomerates that controlled every aspect of their product give the work a deeper sense of context.

Of course, it was the eventual discovery of the holy grail pursued by everyone in the industry -- a workable recipe for smooth, creamier-tasting milk chocolate that was to make his fortune, and the pursuit of this difficult-to-master recipe becomes one of the books most interesting passages.

Though he was not overtly religious, the Mennonite influence of both his mothers side of the family and the region of Pennsylvania in which he was raised was evident in his worldview.

Company employees could be fired for drinking or cursing, even during off hours, and the boss went to lengths to appear like a common man.

Yet, as DAntonio points out, this was inconsistent with other aspects of his life, sides he kept hidden from the townspeople and his employees.

Hershey and his wife often traveled abroad, where he was known as a high-rolling gambler, especially in the casinos of Cuba.

Indeed, he indulged in many of the luxuries available to the newly minted class of millionaires produced by the Gilded Age.

Rather, as DAntonio suggests, he was seen as a good rich man.

Whether from unadulterated altruism or a conscious effort to control his legacy, Hershey acted on his belief that it was sinful for a man to pass on wealth.

But unlike his contemporaries, who were generous only to a degree, Hershey gave away everything he had, naming his orphanage and industrial school (it functions today as the Milton Hershey School) the sole beneficiary of an airtight trust.

His other legacy is the town of Hershey, Pa., which he envisioned as an industrial and agricultural utopia.