MEET THE MAN BEHIND SOME OF OUR BEST KNOWN BRANDS

We live in an age of mass persuasion. Leaders and institutions of every kind-public and private, large

and small-must compete in a rowdy marketplace of images and messages seeming to come at us from all directions-in print, on radio and television, and on the Web.

It wasn't always so. In the early and middle twentieth century, a handful of creative geniuses in advertising and public relations-J. Walter Thompson, Edward Bernays, David Ogilvy, Ray Rubicam, and others-launched their once-sleepy industries into the very center of American life. And most of them point to one individual as the man who started it all: Albert D. Lasker.

But Lasker-who resolutely hid from the spotlight-has remained an enigma. Now, Jeffrey Cruikshank and Arthur Schultz, drawing on a treasure trove of previously unknown papers, have written a fascinating biography of one of the twentieth century's most intriguing figures.

Lasker helped invent “reason why” adver