Books: Prince of Hucksters

TAKEN AT THE FLOOD (368 pp.)—John Gunther—Harper ($5).

One day, when the officials of the American Tobacco Co. panicked in the midst of a minor crisis, the president of the Lord & Thomas Advertising Agency rose from his hospital bed in Baltimore and journeyed to New York to attend an emergency meeting. After he straightened things out, Albert Davis Lasker turned to the other conferees and announced: "Gentlemen, I have done all I can for you. Good day, because I must return to Johns Hopkins now and continue my nervous breakdown."

Patternmaker. For lesser men, the hectic pace of Albert Lasker's...