The Man Who Sold America: The Amazing (but True!) Story of Albert D. Lasker and the Creation of the Advertising Century
Jeffrey L. Cruikshank and Arthur W. Schultz





Format: Hardcover, 480pp.
ISBN: 9781591393085
Publisher: Harvard Business Press
Pub. Date: August 12, 2010

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Description and Reviews
From The Publisher:

We're living in the Age of Persuasion. Leaders and organizations of all kinds--public and private, large and small--fulfill their missions only by competing in the marketplace of images and messages. To win in that marketplace, they need advertising. This has been true since the advent of mass media, from mass-circulation magazines and radio through the age of television and the Internet.

Yet even as they use advertising to capture consumers' imaginations and build their brands, few people know of the ingenious and tormented man who built the modern advertising industry and shaped a new consumer sensibility as the twentieth century unfolded: Albert D. Lasker.

Drawing on a recently uncovered trove of Lasker's papers, Jeffrey Cruikshank and Arthur Schultz have written a fascinating biography of one of the past century's most influential, intriguing, troubled, and instructive figures. Lasker's creative and powerful use of "reason-why" advertising to inject ideas and arguments into ad campaigns had a profound impact on modern advertising, foreshadowing the consumer-centered "unique selling proposition" approach that dominates the industry today. His tactics helped launch or revitalize companies and brands that remain household names--including Palmolive, Goodyear, and Quaker Oats.

As Lasker rose in prominence, he went beyond consumer products to apply his brilliance to presidential politics, government service, and professional sports, changing the game wherever he went, and building a vast fortune along the way. But his intensity had a price--he was felled by mental breakdowns throughout his life. This book also tells the story of how he fought back with determination and with support from family and friends in an age when lack of effective treatment doomed most mentally ill people.

The Man Who Sold America is a riveting account of a man larger than life, who shaped not only an industry but also a century.


About the Author

Jeffrey L. Cruikshank is an author or coauthor of many books, including Shaping the Waves: A History of Entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School. Arthur W. Schultz is a veteran ad agency executive who once headed Foote Cone & Belding, the successor agency to Albert Lasker's Lord & Thomas.


Table of Contents

	Introduction	1
1	The Orator and the Entrepreneur	9
2	The Galveston Hothouse	21
3	Success in Chicago	35
4	Salesmanship in Print	53
5	Growing Up, Breaking Down	67
6	The Greatest Copywriter	89
7	Orange Juice and Raisin Bread	113
8	Fighting for Leo Frank	125
9	Into the Tomato Business	143
10	Saving Baseball from Itself	155
11	Venturing into Politics	169
12	Electing a President	179
13	The Damnedest Job in the World	197
14	A Family Interlude	215
15	A Defeat and Two Victories	223
16	Selling the Unmentionable, and More	239
17	Retrenching and Reshaping	263
18	Selling and Unselling California	289
19	The Downward Spiral	315
20	Changing a Life	335
21	Finding Peace	351
22	The Lasker Legacy	367
	A Note on Primary Sources	381
	Notes	383
	About the Authors	435

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