Search results for ""Author R. Alton Lee""

By 1926, it seemed that John R. Brinkley's experimental rejuvenation cure face=Calibri>– transplanting goat glands into aging men face=Calibri>– had taken the nation by storm. Never mind that 'Doc' Brinkley's medical credentials were shaky at best and that he prescribed medication over the airwaves via his high-power radio stations. To most in the medical field, he was a quack; to his many patients and listeners he was a brilliant surgeon, a saviour of their lost manhood and youth. His rogue radio stations, XER and its successor XERA, eventually broadcast at an antenna-shattering 1,000,000 watts and were not only a haven for Brinkley's lucrative quackery, but also hosted an unprecedented number of then-unknown country musicians and other guests. Indisputably, he transformed the fields of medicine, politics, and radio broadcasting in the 20th century.The Bizarre Careers of John R. Brinkley tells the story of the infamous 'Goat Gland Doctor' face=Calibri>– a controversial medical charlatan, groundbreaking radio impresario, and prescient political campaigner face=Calibri>– and recounts his amazing rags-to-riches-to-rags career. A master manipulator and skilled con artist, Brinkley's story was but a patchy perpetuation of myths by journalistic and personal accounts – until now. Alton Lee brings Brinkley's infamous legacy to the forefront, exploring how he ruthlessly exploited the sexual frustrations of aging men and the general public's antipathy toward medical doctors for his personal gain. Lee leaves no stone unturned in this account of a man who changed the course of American institutions forever.

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When Sunflowers Bloomed Red is a welcome addition to the history of the American Midwest that should have appeal to students, scholars, and general readers.—Greg Hall, Annals of Iowa When Sunflowers Bloomed Red offers readers entry into the Kansas radical tradition and shows how the Great Plains agrarian movement influenced and transformed politics and culture in the twentieth century and beyond. When Sunflowers Bloomed Red reveals the origins of agrarian radicalism in the late nineteenth-century United States. Great Plains radicals, particularly in Kansas, influenced the ideological principles of the Populist movement, the U.S. labor movement, American socialism, American syndicalism, and American communism into the mid-twentieth century. Known as the American Radical Tradition, members of the Greenback Labor Party and the Knights of Labor joined with Prohibitionists, agrarian Democrats, and progressive Republicans to form the Great Plains Populist Party (later the People’s Party) in the 1890s. The Populists called for the expansion of the money supply through the free coinage of silver, federal ownership of the means of communication and transportation, the elimination of private banks, universal suffrage, and the direct election of U.S. senators. They also were the first political party to advocate for familiar features of modern life, such as the eight-hour workday for agrarian and industrial laborers, a graduated income tax system, and a federal reserve system to manage the nation’s money supply. When the People’s Party lost the hotly contested election of 1896, members of the party dissolved into socialist and other left-wing parties and often joined efforts with the national Progressive movement.

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