I wish it were longer.

A very interesting book on the fundamentals of propaganda, with a positive perspective on the word. Despite being nearly 100 years old, the message and tactics of this book are still entirely relevant.

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A dark and foreboding legacy

Edward Bernays is titled the father of public relations. Yet, even a grand acknowledgement like this dramatically understates the impact he had on the 20th century. Today's social media influencers could only dream of the scale of impact of Bernays.

Born in Austria, a twice nephew of Sigmund Freud, Bernays graduated with a degree in agriculture and then took up a role in journalism. This led him to help the administration of Woodrow Wilson to promote the idea that World War I would help bring democracy to Europe.

The effectiveness of this campaign convinced him to test how it would work during peacetime. He used the term "public relations", as the term propaganda had negative implications after the Great War. In his book, he also refers to his wish to rehabilitate the word, ostensibly "to propagate".

He titled his approach "the engineering of consent", drawing on principles through his oft mentioned relationship with Uncle Sigmund. His method provided leaders with the means to "control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing about it".

His results were astounding. He promoted cigarette smoking among women by using the 1929 Easter Parade to promote fashionable young women with their "torches of freedom". Also associating the forest green colour of Lucky Strike packets as the most desirable fashion colour.

He was able to get 5,000 physicians to sign a statement saying a protein-rich breakfast of (say) bacon and eggs was better than a light one to help The Beech-Nut Packing Company sell more bacon, thus creating The American Breakfast.

In the 1950s Bernays worked with the United Fruit Company, a company that had cornered the market on banana production from Guatemala through exploitative practices. This is one of the so-called "banana republics" often spoken about. In 1952, the government of Guatemala began expropriating unused United Fruit Company land to landless peasants.

Bernays's propaganda campaign greatly influenced the government of the United States to stage a coup to remove the communist leaning President and replace him with a nationalistic candidate.

Despite being a Jew, Joseph Goebbels became an admirer of Bernays and his writing. Later on, once Goebbels became Hitler's Minister for Propaganda, using these principles to create the "Fuhrer cult" and to fuel the growing antisemitism of the time.

The book is a small book and one with significant historical importance and value. The author's rather candid way of explaining manipulation as a technical skill set has now grown into a reputable profession. Many issues he promoted, such as the creation of the White House Press Secretary, are now an established part of life. Four stars for the originality, at the time and the historical importance of this work.

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A few good chapters

The introduction, politics, and women chapters are great. The business chapters are already things that today are widely assimilated.

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old ideas for a new world

solid principles still relevant today in the making of our new world order propagandist utopia

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1 person found this helpful

Highly Recommend for everyone

This book is a fantastic start to understand where the Public relations industry started, how it work and a good precursor to 'Manufacturing Consent' by Chomsky. This book along with 'How to Lie with Statistics' by Darrell Huff are incredibly important steps to understanding how western society really works and provides you with the bases on how to navigate it

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Outdated business history

This may have been revolutionary when it came out but now it’s just out of date and not even interesting for historical purposes. The reading was good but the content uninteresting. The word propaganda was basically what we now call advertising

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