Because his feet got wet and sore on a hunting trip, L. L. Bean developed his famous boot and started the mail-order company that would change the sleepy town of Freeport, Maine, into a huge outdoor mall. The story begins with the Bean family, young Leon Leonwood Bean’s love of the outdoors, his first forays into sales (butter, men’s clothing), and then his development of “the boot” and the beginnings of an outdoors outfitting company that ran on a card file system and resisted change. The story of L.L. Bean, Inc.’s phenomenal growth under grandson Leon Gorman is replete with Preppies, MBAs, infighting, and even parodies of a company that would eventually get its own Zip Code.