Psychiana Man: A Mail-Order Prophet, His Followers, and the Power of Belief in Hard Times

Six weeks after the 1929 stock market crash, Frank Bruce Robinson created a self-help religion he called Psychiana. An ingenious mass-marketing pioneer, he sold a correspondence course promising health, wealth, and happiness to those who believed in the "God Power." In the midst of the Great Depression, his mail-order religion with a money-back guarantee swept the United States and spread to some sixty-seven countries-or so its founder claimed-to become one of the most successful twentieth ...