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America's Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam
Crown
February 2008
On Sale: February 5, 2008
Featuring: John R. Brinkley
336 pages
ISBN: 0307339882
EAN: 9780307339881
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Biography
In 1917, after years of selling worthless patent remedies
throughout the Southeast, John R. Brinkley–America’s most
brazen young con man–arrived in the tiny town of Milford,
Kansas. He set up a medical practice and introduced an
outlandish surgical method using goat glands to restore the
fading virility of local farmers.
It was all
nonsense, of course, but thousands of paying customers
quickly turned “Dr.” Brinkley into America’s richest and
most famous surgeon. His notoriety captured the attention of
the great quackbuster Morris Fishbein, who vowed to put the
country’s “most daring and dangerous” charlatan out of
business.
Their cat-and-mouse game lasted throughout
the 1920s and ’30s, but despite Fishbein’s efforts Brinkley
prospered wildly. When he ran for governor of Kansas, he
invented campaigning techniques still used in modern
politics. Thumbing his nose at American regulators, he built
the world’s most powerful radio transmitter just across the
Rio Grande to offer sundry cures, and killed or maimed
patients by the score, yet his warped genius produced
innovations in broadcasting that endure to this day. By
introducing country music and blues to the nation, Brinkley
also became a seminal force in rock ’n’ roll. In short, he
is the most creative criminal this country has ever
produced.
Culminating in a decisive courtroom
confrontation that pit Brinkley against his nemesis
Fishbein, Charlatan is a marvelous portrait of a
boundlessly audacious rogue on the loose in an America that
was ripe for the bamboozling.
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