“By focusing on the intersection between the pharmaceutical industry and popular culture, Alex Taylor Succeeds in telling one of the great tales of American civilization - the heroic effort to conquer the common cold. Both scholarly and entertaining, crammed full with colorful and exotic detail, AMAZING MENTHOLATUM is an amazing achievement.”

Jonathan Kirsch
_{Los Angeles - based author, attorney,
and book review columnist}

“I loved this book.
Played out in the prairie factories of Wichita and the mint fields of Japan-and luxuriously illustrated-this is a tale of an early - twentieth - century battle royal between patent medicines, of Horatio Alger-style entrepreneurship, hucksterism and good works, vividly portrayed against a backdrop of the formative years of today’s multi - billion dollar industry devoted to the common cold as it coevolved with government regulation to curb its colorful and sometimes lethal excesses.”