Charlatan
Surely, this is one of the most interesting books I've ever read.Charlatan: America's Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam is the story of John Brinkley, one of the most influential men of the 1920's and early 1930's. He was a "doctor"--without having gone to medical school--and in an eerie foreshadowing of current times, his specialty was virility restoration.
Via surgery, where goat testicles were implanted in the patient.
Once you get your monitor cleaned off, hang on, because it just gets weirder. In the 1920's, "glandular rejuvenation" was an unbelievable craze. It wasn't just goat testicles and glands--monkey were "cutting edge" as well. These rejuvenation techniques made their practitioners millions of dollars--and were, of course, complete and utter fraud.
Here's how successful Brinkley was--in 1935, in the middle of the Depression, he made 12 million dollars.
Brinkley wasn't just a "doctor"--he was also one of the original marketing geniuses, with a tremendous number of innovations that heavily influenced future decades. He built a 500,000 watt radio station just south of the U.S. border near Del Rio, and he blasted his unique version of medical advice, Bible-thumping, and right-wing propaganda so powerfully that it interfered with stations as far north as Chicago.
As a trivia note, take a look at these lyrics from ZZ Top's Heard It On The X:
We can all thank doctor B
Who stepped across the line.
With lots of watts he took control,
The first one of its kind.
"Doctor B?" That's Brinkley. Because of the mind-boggling power of his radio station, and the number of musical acts he brought in to provide breaks between his hours behind the microphone, he's credited with popularizing country music (which was called hillbilly music back then), and when he lost control of the station in the late 1930's, the new owners were responsible for popularizing rhythm and blues music across the country, with the help of a disc jockey named Wolfman Jack.
Oh, and Brinkley was almost elected Governor of Kansas.
Throughout his career, he was pursued by Morris Fishbein, a relentess pursuer of medical frauds, and after Brinkley sued Fishbein for libel, it set up a courtroom scene that is almost Scopes-worthy in its drama.
The twists and turns, and the moments were my jaw dropped open in amazement, are beyond describing in detail, but it's an absolutely great read. The number of variations on Brinkley's original scam, and becoming immersed in "the age of flimflam," is totally riveting.
Here's an Amazon link: Charlatan: America's Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam.
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