Product Description

The early years of the twentieth century were a difficult period for Big Business. Corporate monopolies, the brutal exploitation of labor, and unscrupulous business practices were the target of blistering attacks from a muckraking press and an increasingly resentful public. Corporate giants were no longer able to operate free from the scrutiny of the masses. The crowd is now in the saddle, warned Ivy Lee, one of Americas first corporate public relations men. The people now rule. We have substituted for the divine right of kings, the divine right of the multitude. Unless corporations developed means for counteracting public disapproval, he cautioned, their future would be in peril. Lees words heralded the dawn of an era in which corporate image management was to become a paramount feature of American society. Some corporations, such as AT&T, responded inventively to the emergency. Others, like Standard Oil of New Jersey (known today as Exxon), continued to fumble the PR ball for decades. The Age of Public Relations had begun. In this long-awaited, pathbreaking book, Stuart Ewen tells the story of the Age unfolding: the social conditions that brought it about; the ideas that inspired the strategies of public relations specialists; the growing use of images as tools of persuasion; and, finally, the ways that the rise of public relations interacted with the changing dynamics of public life itself. He takes us on a vivid journey into the thinking of PR practitionersfrom Edward Bernays to George Gallupexploring some of the most significant campaigns to mold the public mind, and revealing disturbing trends that have persisted to the present day. Using previously confidential sources, and with the aid of dozens of illustrations from the past hundred years, Ewen sheds unsparing light on the contours and contradictions of American democracy on the threshold of a new millennium.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #267049 in Books
• Published on: 1998-10-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 480 pages

Customer Reviews

The best guide to US politics I've seen
I picked up this book in a library sale (sorry, Amazon, no money for you this time) attracted by the title and hoping to pick up some useful tips for a campaign.

What I actually found was an immensely knowledgeable, readable and enlightening exposé of the American political/economic system and how lobbyists, image makers and journalists work symbiotically to mould American political and commercial consciousness to the benefit of their corporate paymasters.

Suddenly the whole Bush/Cheney debacle became explicable: it didn't come out of nowhere, but is part of a historical continuum. I was already a dissenter before reading this, but after seeing exactly how, and how calculatedly, the public has been manipulated by public relations men (and they are mostly men) I will do pretty much anything short of outright illegality to get these people out of power.

Unelected and unaccountable, the PR industry controls what we see hear and read. Read this book and be scared at their power.

Simply outstanding
Information rich and compelling Ewan gives any serious student of PR a framework into which to place the indusrty that is synonomous with the phrase 'let's do lunch.' Taking us from the social instability of the late nineteenth century, to Edward L Bernays the architect of modern day Public Relations Counsel and into the last decade of the twentieth century PR! is a book that image making professionals cannot afford to miss.

I found myself envious of the students who took Ewen's CULTure class and Ewen inspired me to deliver my counsel with integrity.

Thank you Ewen for such a remarkable text.

My students loved it
Given recent noise around the White House sex scandal, my undergraduate students were interested in how the spin machine operates. This book gave them a wonderful historical perspective on current events and how they are packaged in order to influence public opinion.