Pr!: A Social History of Spin

by Stuart Ewen

Book Overview

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 America's first corporate public relations...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0465061796
• ISBN13: 9780465061792
• Release Date: November 1996
• Publisher: Basic Books
• Length: 496 Pages
• Weight: 1.57 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.2" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Required reading for anyone who wants to understand mass media.

This is a must read to understand public relations at its highest form and necessary to prepare for implementation of disruptive technology, or the marketing of any product. It highlights the procedures and the effectiveness of the procedures. It gives many thoughts to contemplate at a commercial and social level.

A book about thought control

A teacher colleague and I read this book when it was first published. We would go to the teachers' lunch room almost everday with an ongoing discussion of what we read. To understand the history, power and influence of public relations and advertising in this country, PR is a must read. In lucid analysis, Ewen lays out how the public relations industry in this country helps to shape the consumer thought of citizens. He shows how this industry grew out of an elitist view of the masses of people in this country that they did not need to be expose to certain information or processes that converen or controll society--both politically and economically. That instead, their thoughts, ideas, and their access to certain knowledge needed to be controlled and that certain information needed to be manufactured in order to push people to act in a certain way.He explains, for example, how elitist writers like Walter Lippman "had written that the key to leadership inthe modern age would depend on the ability to manipulate "'symbols which assemble emotions after they have been detached from their ideas. The public mind is mastered, he continued, through an 'intensificatioin of feeling and a degradation of significance.' " In other words, corporations, and their public relations workers essentially use symbols to further their agendas, which is basically to make huge amounts of profit. I look forward to reading other books by Ewen.

Best book on the subject of PR

I've recently been investigating the history of public relations for a class I'm teaching. Having surveyed the literature on the subject, this one is head and shoulders the best, more informative and insightful than other books. The historical depth, and range of analysis--linking public relations to broader social realities--are extraordinary.

Must Read

Recently there has been a lot of news about AT & T's campaign to establish global domination over the internet. In this book, we learn that AT & Ts attempt to gain a monopoly over all forms of communication is a century old. From 1904, Ewen relates, AT & T was already packaging its plan to gain control of all forms of wire communication in the disguise of kindly old "Ma Bell." The section on AT & T, along with the rest of the book, is must reading.

A fine guide to America's landscape

Beyond being a compelling survey of the history of public relations, I think this book offers a pathway for better understanding a world where--more and more--nothing is as it seems; where there is no reality other than the one assembled by image managers and spin controllers. Clearly written and sobering, this book should provide news junkies around the world with a powerful antidote for the pageantry of staged events.