Tye, Larry. The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays and the Birth of Public
Relations. New York: Crown Publishers, 1998. 306 pages.
This is the first full-scale biography of Edward Bernays (1891-1995),
who was Sigmund Freud's nephew, and who considered himself "the father of
public relations." It is based on 800 boxes of documents that Bernays left
to the Library of Congress, more than 100 interviews with his friends and
associates, his 849-page autobiography published in 1965, and his numerous
articles and speeches. With so much material, one might have hoped that
Larry Tye, a journalist with the Boston Globe, could get behind Bernays'
shameless self-promotion and find something insightful. But it never quite
happens, because Bernays was a shallow and uninspiring person.
For American Tobacco, Bernays got women to start smoking, even while
suspecting that smoking was dangerous. For United Fruit, he whipped U.S.
newspapers into a frenzy so that the CIA could engineer its 1954 coup in
Guatemala. A 1923 book written by Bernays was used by Goebbels, but Bernays
shrugged it off. He did propaganda for South Vietnam in 1961, and then by
1970, after public opinion had changed, he wanted to help the peace movement.
Bernays was the mass-media's version of situation ethics, and an excellent
symbol of what's wrong with contemporary American culture. With Bernays
there is no consistency, no character, no integrity, no conscience, no
bravery, no truth -- nothing but spinning your way to fame and fortune.
ISBN 0-517-70435-8
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