Propaganda

The manual, written without a trace of irony by the man who built the public relations industry. Bernays argued that the conscious manipulation of the masses is a normal and necessary feature of democratic society, and then explained how to do it. To read him is to see the machinery of persuasion described plainly by its own engineer. Unsettling and indispensable: you cannot defend a public mind you do not understand, and here is the blueprint from the inside.

Freud's nephew, and the man who named and built the modern public relations industry. Propaganda is the manual, written without irony, in which he argues that the conscious manipulation of the masses is a normal and necessary feature of democratic society. To read him is to see the machinery of persuasion described by its own engineer, plainly, and to understand a great deal about the century he helped shape.