With Original Shipping Box, Label, and Postmarked Stamps from the Norman Baker Investment Co.
This is a remarkably rare and complete 1934 original copy of The Throttle: A Fact Story of Norman Baker by Alvin Winston—a book that straddles the line between exposé and propaganda, chronicling the controversial life and career of one of America's most flamboyant and fraudulent figures: Norman G. Baker.
What elevates this particular copy into the realm of the exceptional is its original mailing box, complete with label addressed to a Miss Minnie Joecks of Waseca, Minnesota, and bearing two postmarked stamps. The return address? None other than the Norman Baker Investment Co. of Muscatine, Iowa—Baker’s financial front during his turbulent reign as a self-styled medical messiah and media mogul.
The book and box together form a complete, untouched time capsule from the heart of Baker’s operation.
The Throttle was published at the height of Baker’s public war against organized medicine, shortly after his expulsion from the American airwaves and before his arrest. Purportedly authored by journalist Alvin Winston, the book paints Baker as a crusading reformer, revealing a dramatic narrative of persecution, conspiracy, and alleged corruption within the medical establishment.
But it is far from objective journalism. Commissioned and influenced by Baker himself, the book served as part autobiography, part publicity tool, and part retaliation against those who challenged his claims and methods. Its pages are filled with sensational accusations and fervent defenses of Baker’s so-called “cancer cure,” which he administered without any formal medical training.
Norman Baker began his career as a vaudeville magician and inventor of the Tangley Calliaphone, a carnival-style mechanical music machine. He quickly found greater fame and influence through his radio station, KTNT (Know The Naked Truth), from which he launched populist tirades against the government, doctors, and pharmaceutical companies.
By the late 1920s, Baker claimed to have discovered a cure for cancer—a claim he used to lure desperate patients to his “hospital” in Muscatine, and later, to the Crescent Hotel in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. These institutions offered no legitimate treatment. Patients received injections of colored water, were subjected to deceptive regimens, and were charged handsomely for the false hope.
Baker amassed a fortune while many patients died under his care. He was eventually arrested and convicted of mail fraud in 1940, serving a term in Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary. His name has since become synonymous with medical quackery and early 20th-century grift.
If you want to learn more about Norman Baker and his various crimes, head over to our Lantern Light blog post here.
Title: The Throttle: A Fact Story of Norman Baker
Author: Alvin Winston
Publisher: Self-published or via Baker-controlled entity, 1934
Condition: Very good condition overall. It's clear that the book was well-read some time ago as there is some edge wear and a crease in the cover where the book was held. There is some damage to the bottom of the first few pages that lines up with the inner flap of the box. This damage likely occurred due to being stored in this box for almost 100 years. The book is still very readable with good binding.
Includes:
Original shipping box from the Norman Baker Investment Co.
Original mailing label to Miss Minnie Joecks, Waseca, Minn.
Two postmarked stamps, still affixed
This is not just a rare book—it’s a historical document wrapped in its own legacy. Ideal for collectors of medical oddities, true crime, radio history, or early American cult personalities. A sinister relic from a time when belief, bravado, and a mail-order box could spell the difference between life and death.
