Gaylord Wilshire, as he was called, is better remembered today as a real estate developer and pioneer of billboard advertising. He was born rich, got richer, and then went bust, ending his business career in stock fraud and medical quackery. A typical capitalist biography, right? As historian Mark W. Nelson writes, Wilshire was also "a Marxist, a self-described revolutionary socialist, possessed with an inveterate conviction that his economic and political analysis amounted to an objective--indeed thoroughly scientific'--understanding of a historical process."