Post World War I America was a powder keg ready to explode.Returning vets found jobs scarce. Immigrants poured into America from war-ravaged Europe. Many were Catholics who didn't speak English. Blacks moved North in huge numbers to escape the South's oppression. Everything was changing for the white, Protestant establishment. There was an overwhelming fear they were losing their grip on the American Dream.Bessie Tyler and Edward Clarke knew how to turn that fear into dollars...a fortune. For the Kingdom and the Power is the story of two brilliant, spectacularly bold--and quite amoral--marketing geniuses who changed the face of America. In 1915 William Joseph Simmons created the modern Ku Klux Klan with a dramatic ceremony atop Georgia's Stone Mountain. However, Simmons was an inept organizer and leader. By 1919 the Klan numbered only 2,000-3,000 members in Alabama and Georgia. Imperial Wizard Simmons was broke and the Klan was about to die. Tyler and Clarke, owners of an Atlanta advertising agency, sensed an opportunity. Think Ryan and Tatum O'Neil selling Bibles door to door in Paper Moon; Professor Harold Hill hawking band instruments in The Music Man. Now consider two creative con artists applying their entrepreneurial zeal to increasing memberships in a hate group, taking their swindle to a national audience. The two signed an absurdly lucrative contract with Simmons to grow Klan membership. By 1925 the Klan numbered nearly 5 million. Chapters were found in every state of the union, and the Klan had begun influencing American political and social life. Between one-third and one-half of the eligible men in the country belonged to the organization. Clarke and Tyler amassed enormous personal fortunes. For the Kingdom and the Power tells a fascinating, powerful, and previously untold story based on Dale Laackman's original research, archival material never before published, Census records, and obscure books and letters. It's the story of an emerging communications industry, an industry filled with potential and fraught with peril. Public Relations, Marketing, Advertising, and Journalism collide on a grand, national stage. America would never be the same.