The following book is an advertorial written for Lydia Pinkham's Remedies—a herbal-alcoholic "women's tonic" for menstrual and menopausal problems. Interestingly enough, though medical experts dismissed it as a quack remedy, the products are still on sale today in a modified form. This advertorial is one part of the aggressive marketing technique that her brand is known for. Long, promotional copy would dramatize "women's weakness", "hysteria" and other themes commonly referenced at the time. Pinkham urged women to write to her personally, and she would maintain the correspondence in order to expose the customer to more persuasive claims for the remedy.

Lydia Pinkham was one of the 19th century’s most remarkable businesswomen, her influence spreading beyond the late 1800s and her native New England. A champion of equal rights for women and blacks at a time when such causes lacked widespread support, Pinkham was ahead of her time on other issues. Chief among them was the well-being of women struggling with serious health issues related to their menstrual cycles and other so-called “women weaknesses.” But as the teetotaling Pinkham and her namesake company soared to entrepreneurial heights by selling her patient relief in the guise of an alcohol-laced potion known as the Vegetable Compound, generations that followed have been left to wonder: Was she worthy of her female customers’ trust or just an opportunist? In Lydia Pinkham: The Face That Launched a Thousand Ads, historian Sammy R. Danna offers the latest book-length biography that explores all sides of the Lydia Pinkham phenomena. Danna illustrates how remarkable an American historical figure she was, who with associates masterfully used and reinvented the marketing tools of her day, while battling the misogyny of the medical establishment. But Danna also asks whether she was just a grandmotherly version of the pitchmen who roamed from town to town with their snake oil elixirs. Students and scholars in the fields of women’s studies, American culture, and the histories of medicine, advertising, and business will see Lydia Pinkham in a new light.

Traces the history of western medicine through the lives of its major contributors, profiling such well-known figures as Hippocrates and Louis Pasteur, as well as lesser-known scientists including Elle Metchnikoff and Samuel Hahnemann.

Lydia Pinkham was one of the 19th century's most remarkable businesswomen, her influence spreading beyond the late 1800s and her native New England. A champion of equal rights for women and blacks at a time when such causes lacked widespread support, Pinkham was ahead of her time on other issues. Chief among them was the well-being of women struggling with serious health issues related to their menstrual cycles and other so-called "women weaknesses." But as the teetotaling Pinkham and her namesake company soared to entrepreneurial heights by selling her patient relief in the guise of an alcohol-laced potion known as the Vegetable Compound, generations that followed have been left to wonder: Was she worthy of her female customers' trust or just an opportunist? In Lydia Pinkham: The Face That Launched a Thousand Ads, historian Sammy R. Danna offers the latest book-length biography that explores all sides of the Lydia Pinkham phenomena. Danna illustrates how remarkable an American historical figure she was, who with associates masterfully used and reinvented the marketing tools of her day, while battling the misogyny of the medical establishment. But Danna also asks whether she was just a grandmotherly version of the pitchmen who roamed from town to town with their snake oil elixirs. Students and scholars in the fields of women's studies, American culture, and the histories of medicine, advertising, and business will see Lydia Pinkham in a new light.

Raised in the gritty Mississippi River town of Davenport, Iowa, Cora Keck could have walked straight out of a Susan Glaspell story. When Cora was sent to Vassar College in the fall of 1884, she was a typical unmotivated, newly rich party girl. Her improbable educational opportunity at “the first great educational institution for womankind” turned into an enthralling journey of self-discovery as she struggled to meet the high standards in Vassar’s School of Music while trying to shed her reputation as the daughter of a notorious quack and self-made millionaire: Mrs. Dr. Rebecca J. Keck, second only to Lydia Pinkham as America’s most successful self-made female patent medicine entrepreneur of the time. This lively, stereotype-shattering story might have been lost, had Cora’s great-granddaughter, Greta Nettleton, not decided to go through some old family trunks instead of discarding most of the contents unexamined. Inside she discovered a rich cache of Cora’s college memorabilia—essential complements to her 1885 diary, which Nettleton had already begun to read. The Quack’s Daughter details Cora’s youthful travails and adventures during a time of great social and economic transformation. From her working-class childhood to her gilded youth and her later married life, Cora experienced triumphs and disappointments as a gifted concert pianist that the reader will recognize as tied to the limited opportunities open to women at the turn of the twentieth century, as well as to the dangerous consequences for those who challenged social norms. Set in an era of surging wealth torn by political controversy over inequality and women’s rights and widespread panic about domestic terrorists, The Quack’s Daughter is illustrated with over a hundred original images and photographs that illuminate the life of a spirited and charming heroine who ultimately faced a stark life-and-death crisis that would force her to re-examine her doubts about her mother’s medical integrity.

First produced by the Denver Center Theater Company at the Space Theatre in Denver, Colorado, on January 24, 2008.

In this unique work of scholarship, Edd Applegate surveys the key figures and events that transformed the American business landscape from its colonial beginnings to that Mad Men moment when advertising “went professional.” In The Rise of Advertising in the United States: A History of Innovation to 1960, Applegate traces how the explosion of newspapers in the American colonies laid the groundwork for the first advertising agents, leading to America’s first class of professional marketers. This entrepreneurial class of new white-collar professionals thrived on innovation in the quest for more publicity, larger clients, and greater sales. Some of the thought-leaders in what remained a novel, ever-changing form of communication include: • P. T. Barnum, master of the advertising “gimmick” • Lydia Pinkham, queen of the patent medicine cure • John Wanamaker, progenitor of modern retail advertising • Albert Lasker, the formulator of “reason why” advertising • Stanley Resor, the consummate market researcher • Elliott White Springs, the groundbreaking purveyor of the sexual innuendo Applegate records the achievements of these individuals and others up until 1960, when advertising underwent a remarkable change, becoming a post-war subject of study and scholarship in America’s colleges and universities. Written for those interested in learning about a select group of movers and shakers in this key area of American business, The Rise of Advertising in the United States should appeal to anyone interested in American business history.

In 2012 Maria Alyokhina and other members of Pussy Riot performed a provocative 'Punk Prayer', taking on the Orthodox church and its support for Vladimir Putin's authoritarian regime. They were charged with 'organized hooliganism'. That trial and Alyokhina's subsequent imprisonment became an international cause. For Alyokhina, her two-year sentence launched a struggle against the Russian prison system and an iron-willed refusal to be deprived of her humanity. This book gives voice to Alyokhina's insistence on the right to say no, whether to a prison guard or to the president.