The LEGO Story: How a Little Toy Sparked the World's Imagination

by Jens Andersen

Overview

“Absolutely essential reading for every LEGO fan.” —Blocks

The definitive history of LEGO, based on unprecedented access to the company’s archives and rare interviews with the founding family who still owns the company

"This book tells the story of how my family built the LEGO brand." —Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, former President/CEO of the LEGO Group and 3rd generation owner

It’s estimated that each year between eighty and ninety million children around the globe are given a box of LEGO, while up to ten million adults buy sets for themselves. Yet LEGO is much more than a dizzying number of plastic bricks that can be put together and combined in countless ways. LEGO is also a vision of the significance of what play can mean for humanity.

This book tells the extraordinary story of a global company and a Danish family who for ninety years have defended children’s right to play—and who believe grown-ups, too, should make the time to nurture their inner child. The LEGO Story is built on Jens Andersen’s unique access to LEGO’s own archives, as well as on Andersen’s extensive conversations with Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, former president and CEO of the LEGO group and grandson of its founder, Ole Kirk Christiansen.

A riveting cultural history of changing generations’ views of childhood and the importance of play, The LEGO Story also a fascinating case study of how innovation and creativity helped leaders transform LEGO from a small carpentry business into the world’s largest producer of play materials and one of the most beloved brands in the world. Richly illustrated with never-before-seen photos from the family’s private archive, this is the ultimate book for fans of LEGO, revealing everything you ever wanted to know about the brand. 

An International Bestseller

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780063258020
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	11/15/2022
Pages:	432
Sales rank:	391,179
Product dimensions:	9.10(w) x 6.30(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Jens Andersen is an award-winning Danish author and literary critic whose works include acclaimed biographies of Hans Christian Andersen and Astrid Lindgren. He has a Ph.D. in Nordic Literature from Copenhagen University. Jens lives in Denmark and writes for several Danish newspapers.

Editorial Reviews

10/31/2022

Biographer Andersen (Astrid Lindgren: The Woman Behind Pippi Longstocking) turns to the legacy of Lego in this charming outing. Using the Lego Group’s archives and conversations with former president and CEO Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen (founder Ole Kirk Christiansen’s grandson), Andersen begins in 1915, in Western Jutland, Denmark, when Christiansen, a carpenter, bought a wood workshop. But his business foundered, only to be saved in 1932 after a lumber merchant saw toys Christiansen made and placed a large order for them. Toys became the center of Kristiansen’s company, and the plastic blocks the company is famous for came about thanks to a mid-1940s wood shortage and inspiration from the “self-locking building bricks” made by an English toy company. Not long after, the company opened a headquarters in Germany, and, after a 1956 PR campaign, “money started rolling in.” The upward trajectory continued in the early 1970s, when “expansion grew by 155 percent,” and by the 1980s, the company signed a deal with McDonald’s in America. Andersen does a great job showing the company’s lasting power through 90 years of change, and the archival photos are a treat. This will delight business history buffs. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

This compelling cultural history of the Danish company that revolutionized toys for children and adults draws from the author’s unique access to Lego’s archives and interviews with its former president.” — New York Times Book Review

“The LEGO Story is absolutely essential reading for every LEGO fan. If you know nothing about the company and founding family’s history, then this is the perfect starting point. If you already know a lot of it, then this is packed with new information that you haven’t heard before. Whatever you do though, make sure you finish any urgent build projects before you start reading – this pacey, enjoyable book is really hard to put down.” — Blocks

"This book tells the story of how my family built the LEGO brand." — Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, former President/CEO of the LEGO Group and 3rd generation owner

"How did stackable plastic blocks made by a Danish toy company become as ubiquitous in America as Tylenol and Kleenex? The Lego Story starts with the Christiansen family’s Great Depression–era decision to switch from carpentry to toys in order to stay afloat and brings us to the present." — Vulture, "6 Books You Should Read This Month"

"LEGO owner Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen spills all in [this] authorized biography. ... Charting 90 years of LEGO history, complete with archival photographs, The LEGO Story goes beyond the life and times of Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen to detail how his grandfather Ole Kirk first started the LEGO Group in 1932. Along the way, Andersen recounts how the Kristiansen family transformed the company from a small carpentry business into a world-leading toy manufacturer." — Brick Fanatics 

“A welcome gift for the LEGO lover in the family and a revealing work of business history.” — Kirkus Reviews

“Charming. … Andersen does a great job showing the company’s lasting power through 90 years of change, and the archival photos are a treat. This will delight business history buffs.”  — Publishers Weekly

“Those interested in LEGO history will find this book comprehensive and will enjoy interviews, photos, and the evolution of a toy legend.” — Booklist

"In this extraordinary inside look at LEGO, Jens Andersen tells the fascinating story of how a Danish family transformed a small carpentry business into the world’s largest producer of play materials. ... The LEGO Story is a richly illustrated, inside look into how innovation and creativity helped redefine the meaning of play – and established LEGO as one of the world’s most beloved brands." — J.P. Morgan NextList citation

From the Publisher

2022-09-24
A cultural and business history of “a global company and a Danish family who for ninety years have defended children’s right to play—and who believe grown-ups, too, should make the time to nurture their inner child.”

A few dozen pages into his narrative, Danish journalist Andersen turns up a fact that might surprise fans of LEGO (he follows company practice in capitalizing the name but without its customary trademark sign): The idea for the molded plastic bricks was borrowed from a British firm, which led to a patent investigation. “With a handful of pieces like these,” as Andersen reconstructs founder Ole Kirk Christiansen’s aha moment, “any child would be able to copy real-life tradesmen and become their own masons.” That utilitarian note is unsurprising given that Christiansen ran a profitable construction firm that survived the Great Depression in part by building things such as ladders, high chairs, and, yes, toys that placed children in adult roles. In Christiansen’s carefully thought-through ideology, it went both ways: Children might play as adults, but adults, he urged, needed to recapture the spirit of childhood play. Andersen links this attention to child development with a sweeping cultural movement. “In the 1940s and early 1950s, several landmark children’s books were written in Scandinavia,” he writes. “For the first time in world literature, adult writers dared to make children and childlike characters the first-person narrators of children’s books, giving children natural-sounding voices.” Christiansen would go on to build an empire of toys that expanded in many directions under the care of his descendants—the company is wholly family owned—and eventually led to another treasure: LEGOLAND, the much-beloved Danish theme park. Not every LEGO experiment panned out, and entering the American market (at first in an unlikely partnership with Samsonite, the luggage manufacturer) proved difficult, but the company has continued to thrive.

A welcome gift for the LEGO lover in the family and a revealing work of business history as well.

Kirkus Reviews