The Man Who Sold America: The Amazing (but True!) Story of Albert D. Lasker and the Creation of the Advertising Century »

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.

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.

Publishers Weekly

When Albert Lasker dove head first into the ad game in 1898, it was a field of circus buskers and snake oil salesmen. A consummate perfectionist, Lasker changed the game and established dozens of new concepts, including copywriting, keyed ads, market research, soap operas, boxtop premiums, establishing a "reason why" the consumer should buy, and "truth in advertising" (in order to sell a product as the "best," it truly has to be the best). Much like Mad Men's Donald Draper, Lasker was a genius at selling products, and Cruikshank and Schultz present him, warts and all, but don't limit their focus to Lasker's time in the game. Advertising was but the first of his many conquests. He used the skills he honed at Lord & Thomas in politics, shipping, baseball, social services, and even art collecting. Despite its title, The Man Who Sold America isn't about advertising; it's about how Albert Lasker created and applied industry methods to all facets of society, revealing the industry's amazingly insidious reach into the every day. (Aug.)

Table of Contents

Introduction Chapter 1: The Orator and the Entrepreneur Chapter 2: The Galveston Hothouse Chapter 3: Success in Chicago Chapter 4: Salesmanship in Print Chapter 5: Growing Up, Breaking Down Chapter 6: The Greatest Copywriter Chapter 7: Orange Juice and Raisin Bread Chapter 8: Fighting for Leo Frank Chapter 9: Into the Tomato Business Chapter 10: Saving Baseball from Itself Chapter 11: Venturing into Politics Chapter 12: Electing a President Chapter 13: The Damnedest Job in the World Chapter 14: A Family Interlude Chapter 15: A Defeat and Two Victories Chapter 16: Selling the Unmentionable, and More Chapter 17: Retrenching and Reshaping Chapter 18: Selling and Unselling California Chapter 19: The Downward Spiral Chapter 20: Changing a Life Chapter 21: Finding Peace Chapter 22: The Lasker Legacy A Note on Primary Sources Notes About the Author