Charlatan: America's Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam by Pope Brock
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This was an amazing chapter of history told in a brisk and entertaining manner. Fraudulent surgeon "Doctor" John Brinkley made a fortune, millions in Depression years when true specialists made thousands by inserting goats' testes into impotent American men and becoming a media demagogue. His nemesis was Dr. Morris Fishbein, editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association, took him fifteen years to destroy Brinkley in a dramatic courtroom showdown marking the culmination of an epic struggle worth of an opera. As interesting is reading of his pioneering use of radio that not only kick-started hillbilly/country music as a national force in America but paved the way for rock-n-roll border blasters (he is immortalized in ZZ Top's "Heard it on the X") and DJs like Wolfman Jack.
This is one of the best history works I have read in a while.
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