Book Description

Excerpt from Public Relations, Edward L. Bernays and the American Scene: Annotated Bibliography of and Reference Guide to Writings by and About Edward L. Bernays By any test, public relations is today a recognized profession; it has its responsible practitioners; it has a growing number of university courses; it has a growing sense of social responsibility. It has its own training courses and it can point to a steady growth of conscious public relations activity by profit and non profit institutions and by government agencies with professional public relations counsel in charge. Most important for our purposes, public relations has its own field of literature and this book will deal with a vital segment of that field. Literature on public relations is extensive, but a check of public libraries reveals that much of this literature is scattered in books on related subjects and in magazines. Bibliography of the field is extremely limited. Yet bibliography is recognized as a vital tool in providing an organized approach to basic knowledge and points of view in any subject. To individuals working in any field of research or study, bibliography is indispensable. Unfortunately, there has been little bibliography in public relations, principally because it is a new subject. There are, to be sure, journals which cover the literature in related fields, such as The Public Opinion Quarterly; but these concern themselves chiefly with books, and do not as a rule cover even important material appearing in magazines and other publications. There are two important bibliographies in the general field - Propaganda and Promotional Activities, edited by Lasswell, Casey and Smith and published by the University of Minnesota Press in 1935; and a comparable volume published by the Princeton University Press in 1946. But even these standard works do not include all the available material on public relations, particularly pamphlets, booklets, quotations from books and so on. Since there is today widespread interest in public relations, and a growing literature about it, it was believed that a bibliography of published material by and about the leading practitioner would provide important data for those who are studying the field both in the universities and outside them. Among other things, such a bibliography would show the scope and advance of the profession of public relations counsel, changing attitudes toward the profession, the public's growing understanding of it, and how a point of view has extended and penetrated into many fields of learning. To achieve this purpose, the items in the bibliography would of necessity have to be abstracts of the original material, in some cases fairly long, in order to give a clear picture of the movement of ideas. This work, then, is concerned with published material by and about Edward L. Bernays, public relations counsel. This choice appeared to be ideal for a bibliography because of Mr. Bernays' outstanding position as a founding-father, practitioner and theoretician. Time magazine has called him U. S. Publicist No. 1; and William H. Baldwin of Baldwin and Mermey, in Two-Way Street by Eric Goldman, has said of him: "Bernays had more to do with developing acceptance of PR and public relations counsel than any half dozen other persons." About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com