Lydia Pinkham

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.