false 93845 0 0 male 1851568 0307339882 9780307339881 126 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1189197969m/1851568.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1189197969s/1851568.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1851568.Charlatan_America_s_Most_Dangerous_Huckster_the_Man_Who_Pursued_Him_and_the_Age_of_Flimflam 3.71 318
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.]]> 93845 3.70 355 136 2008 161865 0385485093 9780385485098 4 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172295257m/161865.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172295257s/161865.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/161865.Indiana_Gothic_A_Story_of_Adultery_and_Murder_in_an_American_Family 3.50 18
Journalist Pope Brock grew up ignorant of his family's most closely guarded secret. It was only when his great-aunt was dying that he learned the true circumstances surrounding the death of his great-grandfather Ham Dillon. An aspiring young Indiana politician, Dillon was shot to death in 1908 by his own brother-in-law, Link Hale--a man half-crazed with anger and grief over the fact that his wife, Allie, had just borne Ham a child. To add another twist, Allie Hale was more than just Ham Dillon's lover; she was also his wife's only sister.

Fascinated by this revelation, Pope Brock began his research. In Indiana Gothic, he tells the story of Ham Dillon with the sweep and power of a novel, re-creating the era in such vivid detail that we have the sensation of time travel. Readers first meet the young Ham Dillon--handsome, charismatic, ambitious--as he courts Maggie Thompson, the daughter of a well-to-do farmer. But after their marriage in 1898, Ham comes into the orbit of Maggie's sister, Allie, who is locked in a joyless marriage to the depressive Link Hale. Passion soon takes over, and tragedy ensues--culminating in the drama of Link's murder trial, which made headlines for its controversial use of the insanity plea. Atmospheric and gripping, Indiana Gothic is a bold saga of an American past that is both forever lost and strangely, startlingly familiar.]]> 93845 3.70 355 136 1999 6408959 0753825716 9780753825716 1 http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6408959-charlatan 3.50 2 93845 3.70 355 136 2009