A seminal work on how public opinion is created and shaped, Edward Bernays’s 1923 classic Crystallizing Public Opinion set down the principles that corporations and government have used to influence public attitudes over the past century.
A primer on the then new profession of “public relations counsel,” Crystallizing elucidates the “instruments and techniques” that PR professionals use to mold public opinion on behalf of their client’s interests. By adapting the ideas that Bernays put forth in this book, governments and advertisers have been able to “regiment the mind like the military regiments the body.”
The first ever book ever written about the public relations industry, this all-new edition of Crystallizing Public Opinion features an introduction by Stuart Ewen, author of PR! A Social History of Spin, All Consuming Images: On the Politics of Style in Contemporary Culture, and Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture.
Nicknamed “the father of public relations,” Edward Bernays (1891-1995) was a pioneer in the fields of propaganda and public relations, combining theories on crowd psychology with the psychoanalytical ideas of his uncle, Sigmund Freud, to become the first thinker to explain how corporations and politicians could manipulate public opinion. His seminal 1928 book Propaganda laid out how propaganda could be used to regiment the collective mind in a variety of areas, including government, politics, art, science and education.
I am glad to see that you published this and Eddie’s other book. He would be very pleased. He tried several times to get them reprinted but there were no takers. I know because I was close to him when I worked for United Fruit Company in NY. And Bernays was UF’s PR counsel. That was in the Fifties and in the Sixties we both moved to Boston. We remained friends until I wrote AN AMERICAN COMPANY: The tragedy of United Fruit (Crown, 1974) which detailed his involvement in the overthrow of the Arbenz government in Guatemala in ’54. He never forgave me for that! And, the better the book did, and the more languages it was published in, the madder he got. He was, himself, an original edition. I am sure you read Larry Tye’s FATHER OF SPIN.
I am Brooklyn born and proud of it qnd have written extensively about my youth there. Good luck to you.
Tom McCann
Boston