Public Relations

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Abrams, Janet Y.  “Constructing the Corporate Image: Architecture, Mass Media, and Management in the Early Multinational Corporation, a Case Study of the National Cash Register Company, Dayton, OH, 1884-1906.”  PhD dissertation, Princeton University, 1989.

Aldrich, Mark. “Public Relations and Technology: The ‘Standard Railroad of the World’ and the Crisis in Railroad Safety, 1897–1916.” Pennsylvania History 74 (Winter 2007):  74–104.

Alwood, Edward.  “The Role of Public Relations in the Gay Rights Movement, 1950-1969.” Journalism History 41:1 (Spring 2015): 11-20.

Anderson, William B.  “Crafting the National Pastime’s Image: The History of Major League Baseball Public Relations.” Journalism and Mass Communication Monographs 5:1 (Spring 2003).

Anderson, William.  “The Next Great Plague to Go: How the U.S. Surgeon General Used Public Relations to Fight Venereal Disease During the Great Depression.”  Journalism History 44:2 (Summer 2018): 63-69.

Anderson, William B.  “I Paid My Income Tax Today: How the US Government Used Public Relations to Persuade Its Citizens to Accept a Mass Tax During World War II.” Public Relations Review 46:4 (2020).

Aronczyk, Melissa.  “Public Relations, Issue Management, and the Transformation of American Environmentalism, 1948-1992.”  Enterprise & Society 19:4 (December 2018): 836-863.

Bernays, Edward L.  Crystallizing Public Opinion. New York: Boni and Liveright, 1923.

Bernays, Edward L.  Biography of an Idea: Memoirs of Public Relations Council Edward L. Bernays.  New York: Simon and Schuster, 1965.

Bernays, Edward L.  “Emergence of the Public Relations Council: Principles and Recollections.”  Business History Review 45 (August 1971): 296-313.

Bird, William L.  Better Living: Advertising, Media, and the New Vocabulary of Business Leadership, 1935-1955. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1999.

Bogle, Lori Lyn.  “Pandering to the Crowd: The American Governing Elite’s Changing Views on Mass Media and Publicity During the Nineteenth Century.” Journalism History 43:2 (Summer 2017): 62-74.

Browning, Nicholas.  “Ethics and the Profession: The Crystallizing of Public Relations Practice from Association to Accreditation, 1936-1964.”  American Journalism 35:2 (Spring 2018): 140-170.

Capozzi, Louis, and Shelley Spector.  Public Relations for the Public Good: How PR Has Shaped America’s Social Movements.  New York: Business Expert Press, 2016.

Capizzo, Luke, Mikayla Pevac, and Stephanie Madden. “It’s About (Damn) Time: Community, Temporality, and Feminist Values in Activist Public Relations History.” Public Relations Review 49:2 (2023)

Carey, Alex.  Taking the Risk Out of Democracy: Corporate Propaganda Versus Freedom and Liberty. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997.

Cecil, Matthew C.  “Seductions of Spin: Public Relations and the FBI Myth.”  PhD dissertation, University of Iowa, 2000.

Cecil, Matthew, Jessica Freeman, and Jennifer Tiernan. “Jackals, Vultures, Scavengers, and Scoundrels: FBI Public Relations and J. Edgar Hoover’s Handwritten ‘Blue Gems.” Journalism History 43:1 (2017): 2-11.

Clark, Justin T.  “Confronting the ‘Seeker of Notoriety’: Pathological Lying, the Public, and the Press, 1890-1920.”  American Journalism 34:2 (Spring 2017): 179-200.

Crawford, Kenneth Gale.  The Pressure Boys: The Inside Story of Lobbying in America.  New York: Messner, 1939.

Curtin, Patricia A. “Fred Harvey Company Public Relations and Publicity (1876-1933).” Journal of Communication Management 12:4 (2008): 359-373.

Curtain, Patricia.  “Discourses of American Indian Racial Identity in the Public Relations Materials of the Harvey Company, 1902-1936.”  Journal of Public Relations Research 23:4 (2011): 368-396.

Cutlip, Scott M.  “The History of Public Relations Education in the United States.”  Journalism Quarterly 38:3 (June 1961): 363-370.

Cutlip, Scott M. The Unseen Power: Public Relations, A History. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1994.

Cutlip, Scott M.  Public Relations History: From the 17th to the 20th Century.   Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1995.

Deakin, James.  The Lobbyists.  Washington DC: Public Affairs Press, 1966.  Some material on PR and public opinion.

DeLorme, Denise E., and Fred Fedler.  “Journalists’ Hostility Toward Public Relations: An Historical Analysis.” Public Relations Review 29 (2003): 99-124.

Delton, Jennifer.   The Industrialists: How the National Association of Manufacturers Shaped American Capitalism.  Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020.  

Ewen, Stuart.  PR!: A Social History of Spin. New York: Basic Books, 1996.

Fenske, Gail, and Deryck Holdsworth.  “Corporate Identity and the New York Office Building,” in The Landscape of Modernity: New York City, 1900-1940, David Ward and Olivier Zunz, eds. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992. 

Fitzgerald, Stephen E.  “Public Relations: A Profession in Search in Professionals.”  Public Opinion Quarterly 10:2 (Summer 1946): 191-200.

Fones Wolf, Elizabeth.  Selling Free Enterprise: The Business Assault on Labor and Liberalism, 1945-1960.  Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994.   

Fones Wolf, Elizabeth. “Creating a Favorable Business Climate: Corporations and Radio Broadcasting, 1934-1954.” Business History Review 73, No. 2 (Summer 1999): 221-255. 

Fullerton, Ronald A.  “The Art of Public Relations: U.S. Department Stores, 1876-1923.”  Public Relations Review 16:3 (Fall 1990): 68-79.

Galambos, Louis.  The Public Image of Big Business in America, 1880-1940. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975.

Golden, L.L.L.  Only by Public Consent: American Corporations’ Search for Favorable Public Opinion.  New York, 1968.

Gower, Karla K.  “Rediscovering Women in Public Relations: Women in the Public Relations Journal, 1945-1972.” Journalism History 27:1 (Spring 2001): 14-21.

Gower, Karla K.  Public Relations and the Press: The Troubled Embrace.  Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2007.

Gower, Karla. “US Corporate Public Relations in the Progressive Era.” Journal of Communication Management 12:4 (2008): 305-318.

Gower, Karla K., and Margot Opdycke Lamme. “Public Relations on Trial: The Railroad-Truckers Brawl.” Journalism History 29:1 (Spring 2003): 12-20.

Gower, Karla K.  Betsy Ann Plank: The Making of a Public Relations Icon.  Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2022.

Graham, Amanda.  “The Copper Commando and the Anaconda Company’s Wartime Production.”  Montana: The Magazine of Western History 59:4 (Winter 2009): 67-72.  

Gray, David A. “Managing Motivation: The Seth Seiders Syndicate and the Motivational Publicity Business in the 1920s.” Winterthur Portfolio 44 (Spring 2010): 77–122.

Griese, Noel L.  “AT&T: Origins of the Nation’s Oldest Continuous Institutional Advertising Campaign.”  Journal of Advertising 6 (1977): 18-22.

Griese, Noel L.  Arthur W. Page: Publisher, Public Relations Pioneer, Patriot.  Anvil Books, 2001.

Gruening, Ernest.  The Public Pays: A Study of Power Propaganda.  New York: Vanguard Press, 1931.  (PR by public utilities to influence legislation in the 1920s)

Hallahan, Kirk.  “Ivy Lee and the Rockefellers’ Response to the 1913-1914 Colorado Coal Strike.” Journal of Public Relations Research 14:4 (2002): 265-316.

Harwood, John.  The Interface: IBM and the Transformation of Corporate Design, 1945-1975.  Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011.

Heath, Robert, and Shannon Bowen. “The Public Relations Philosophy of John W. Hill: Bricks in the Foundation of Issues Management.” Journal of Public Affairs 2:4 (2002): 230–246.

Henry, Susan. “Anonymous in Her Own Name: Public Relations Pioneer Doris Fleischman.”  Journalism History 23:2 (Spring 1997): 50-62. 

Henry, Susan.  “There is Nothing in This Profession That a Woman Cannot Do: Doris E. Fleischman and the Beginnings of Public Relations.” American Journalism 16:2 (Spring 1999): 85-111.

Holley, Jason R.  “Gifford Pinchot and The Fight For Conservation: The Emergence of Public Relations and the Conservation Movement, 1901-1910.” Journalism History 42:2 (Summer 2016): 91-100.

Horsley, J. Suzanna. “Women’s Contributions to American Public Relations, 1940-1970.” Journal of Communication Management 13:2 (2009): 100-115.

Howlett, Michael, and Rebecca Raglon.  “Constructing the Environmental Spectacle: Green Advertisements and the Greening of the Corporate Image, 1910-1990.”  Environmental History Review 16:4 (Winter 1992): 53-68.

Hiebert, Ray Eldon.  Courtier to the Crowd: The Story of Ivy L. Lee and the Development of Public Relations. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1986.

Hill, John W.  The Making of a Public Relations Man.  New York: McKay, 1963.

Hulden, Vilja. “Employer Organizations’ Influence on the Progressive Era Press.” Journalism History 38:1 (2012): 43-54.  

Irwin, Will.  Propaganda and the News.  New York: Whittlesey House, 1936.

Jack, Caroline.  “Fun and Facts About American Business: Economic Education and Business Propaganda in an Early Cold War Cartoon Series.” Enterprise & Society 16:3 (September 2015): 491-520.

Jack, Caroline.  Business as Usual: How Sponsored Media Sold American Capitalism in the Twentieth Century.  Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2024.  

Jackall, Robert, and Janine M. Hirota.  Image Makers: Advertising, Public Relations, and the Ethos of Advocacy.  Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.

Jaques, Tony. “Howard Chase: The Man Who Invented Issue Management.” Journal of Communication Management 12:4 (2008): 336–343.   

Johansen, Peter.  “For Better, Higher, and Nobler Things: Massey’s Pioneering Employee Publication.” Journalism History 27:3 (Fall 2001): 94-104.  

Jones, John Price, and David McLaren Church.  At the Bar of Public Opinion: A Brief for Public Relations.  New York: Inter-River Press, 1939.

Kay, Gwen.  “Healthy Public Relations: The FDA’s 1930s Legislative Campaign.”  Bulletin of Medical History 75 (2001): 446-487.

Kelly, Stanley, Jr.  Professional Public Relations and Political Power.  Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1956.

Kerr, Robert L.  “Creating the Corporate Citizen: Mobil Oil’s Editorial Advocacy Campaign in the New York Times to Advance the Right and Practice of Corporate Political Speech.”  American Journalism 21 (Fall 2004): 39-62.

Key, V. O.  Politics, Parties, and Pressure Groups.  Fourth edition.  New York: Crowell, 1958.

Kirk, Jeremy.  The Build-Up Boys.  New York: Scribner’s, 1950. 

Lamme, Margot Opdycke. “The Public Sentiment Building Society: The Anti-Saloon League of America, 1895-1910.” Journalism History 29:3 (Fall 2003): 123-132.

Lamme, Margot Opdycke. “Outside the Prickly Nest: Revisiting Doris Fleischman.”  American Journalism 24 (Summer 2007): 85–107.

Lamme, Margot Opdycke. “The Brewers and Public Relations History, 1909-1919.” Journal of Public Relations History21:4 (October 2009): 455-477.

Lamme, Margot Opdyke, and Karen Miller Russell.  “Removing the Spin: Toward a New Theory of Public Relations History.”  Journalism and Communication Monographs 11:4 (Winter 2010): 281-362.

Lamme, Meg Opdyke. “Shining the Calcium Light: The WCTU and Public Relations History.”   Journalism and Mass Communications Quarterly 88:2 (Summer 2011): 245-266.

Lamme, Margot Opdycke, and Lisa Mullikin Parcell.  “Promoting Hershey: The Chocolate Bar, the Chocolate Town, the Chocolate King.”  Journalism History 38:4 (Winter 2013): 198-208.

Lamme, Margot Opdycke.  Public Relations and Religion in American History: Power of the Word.  New York: Routledge, 2013.

Lee, Ivy.  Publicity: Some of the Things it is and is Not.  New York: Industries Publishing Co., 1925.

Lee, Mordecai.  “Origins of the Epithet ‘Government By Public Relations’: Revisiting Bruce Catton’s War Lords of Washington.” Public Relations Review 35 (2009): 388-394.

Lewis, David L.  The Public Image of Henry Ford. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1976.

Lloyd, Craig M.  Aggressive Introvert: Herbert Hoover and Public Relations Management, 1912-1932. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1973.

Logan, Nneka.  “Corporate Voice and Ideology: An Alternate Approach to Understanding Public Relations History.” Public Relations Review 40:4 (November 2014): 661-668.

McCamy, James L.  Federal Publicity: Its Practice in Federal Administration. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1939.

McNicholas, Joseph.  “William S. Burroughs and Corporate Public Relations.” Arizona Quarterly 57:4 (Winter 2001): 121-149.

Maney, Richard.  Fanfare, the Confessions of a Press Agent.  New York: Harper, 1957.

Marchand, Roland. Creating the Corporate Soul: The Rise of Public Relations and Corporate Imagery in American Big Business.  Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.

Martinelli, Diana Knott, and Shannon A. Bowen.  “The Public Relations Work of Journalism Trailblazer and First Lady Confident Lorena Hickok, 1937-45.”  Journalism History 35:3 (Fall 2009): 131-140.

Meyerhoff, Arthur E.  The Strategy of Persuasion: The Use of Advertising Skills in Fighting the Cold War.  New York: Coward-McCann, 1965.

Miller, Karen. “Air Power is Peace Power: The Aircraft Industry’s Campaign for Public and Political Support, 1943-1949.” Business History Review 70:3 (Autumn 1996): 297-327.

Miller, Karen S. The Voice of Business: Hill & Knowlton and Postwar Public Relations. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999.

Miller Russell, Karen.  “Understanding Ivy Lee’s Declaration of Principles: U.S. Newspaper and Magazine Coverage of Publicity and Press Agentry, 1865-1904.” Public Relations Review 35 (2009): 91-101.

Miller Russell, Karen, and Margot Opdycke Lamme.  “Public Relations and Business Reponses to the Civil Rights Movement.” Public Relations Review 39 (2013): 63-73.

Miller Russell, Karen.  “The Power of Women: Flanley & Woodward and the Woman’s Angle in U.S. Public Relations.” Public Relations Review 46:4 (2020): 1-10.

Mittell, Jason S.  “Invisible Footage: Industry on Parade and Television Historiography.” Film History 9:2 (1997): 200-218.  

Monticone, Paul.  “Useful Cinema, of What Use?:  Assessing the Role of Motion Pictures in the Largest Public Relations Campaign of the 1920s.”  Cinema Journal 54:4 (Summer 2015): 74-99.     Utility company public relations films

Moore, Kimbery Williams.  “Toward and Inclusive History of PR: An Examination of the Founding of the NAACP and ADL and Their Uses of PR, 1907-1917.”  PhD dissertation, University of North Carolina, 2003.

Moran, Christopher Richard. “The Last Assignment: David Atlee Phillips and the Birth of CIA Public Relations.” International History Review 35 (April 2013): 337–355.

Mullikin Parcell, Lisa, Margot Opdycke Lamme, and Skye Chance Cooley. “Learning from the Trades: Public Relations, Journalism, and News Release Writing, 1945-2000.” American Journalism 28:2 (2011): 82-112.

Mullikin Parcell, Lisa, and Margot Opdyke Lamme.  “Not Merely an Advertisement: Purity, Trust, and Flour, 1880-1930,” American Journalism 29:4 (Fall 2012): 94-127.

Musgrave, Kevin.  “Capitalism and Pastoral Power in Bruce Barton’s ‘The Public.’” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 20:1 (2017): 133-160.

Myers, Cayce.  “Reconsidering Propaganda in U.S. Public Relations History: An Analysis of Propaganda in the Popular Press, 1810-1918.”  Public Relations Review 41(2015): 551-561.

Myers, Cayce.  “Reconsidering the Corporate Narrative in U.S. PR History: A Critique of Alfred Chandler’s Influence on PR Historiography.”  Public Relations Review 40:4 (November 2014): 676-683.

Myers, Cace.  “Publicists in US Public Relations History: An Analysis of Representations of Publicists, 1815-1918.” American Journalism 34:1 (Winter 2017): 71-90.

Myers, Cayce.  “Regulating Public Relations: How U.S. Legal Policies and Regulations Shaped Early Corporate Public Relations.” American Journalism 37:2 (Spring 2020): 139-164.

Myers, Cayce.  Public Relations History: Theory, Practice and Profession. New York: Routledge, 2020.

Nye, David E.  Image Worlds: Corporate Identities at General Electric, 1890-1930. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985.

Olasky, Marvin.  “Bringing Order Out of Chaos: Edward Bernays and the Salvation of Society Through Public Relations.”  Journalism History 12:1 (Spring 1985): 17-21.

Olasky, Marvin. “Corporate Public Relations: A New Historical Perspective. Journalism Monographs, No. 102 (1987).

Page, Tyler G., Christopher Wilson, and Edward E. Adams. “Rethinking the Start Date for Media Relations and Press Releases: The Peace Movement of the 1800s.” Public Relations Review 50:1 (2024).

Pearson, R.  “Perspectives on Public Relations History.” Public Relations Review 16:3 (Fall 1990): 27-38.

Pimlott, J. A. R.  Public Relations and American Democracy.  Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951.

Pratt, Joseph A., et al.  Voice in the Marketplace: A History of the National Petroleum Council.  College Station: Texas A&M Press, 2001.

Raucher, Alan. Public Relations and Business, 1900-1929. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1968.

Reichenbach, Harry.  Phantom Fame.  New York: Simon & Schuster, 1931.  (early press agent) 

Ribuffo, Leop P.  “Jesus Christ as Business Statesman: Bruce Barton and the Selling of Corporate Capitalism.”  American Quarterly 33:2 (Summer 1981): 206-231.

Riley, John W., ed.  The Corporation and its Publics: Essays on the Corporate Image.  New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1963.

Robert, Daniel.  Courteous Capitalism: Public Relations and the Monopoly Problem, 1900-1930.  Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2023.

Rodgers, Ronald R.  “The Press and Public Relations Through the Lens of the Periodicals, 1890-1930.” Public Relations Review 36 (2010): 50-55.

Ross, Irwin.  The Image Merchants.  Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1959.

Russell, Karen Miller.  “Understanding Ivy Lee’s Declaration of Principles: U.S. Newspaper and Magazine Coverage of Publicity and Press Agentry, 1865-1904.” Public Relations Review 35:2 (June 2009): 91-101.

Russell, Karen Miller, and Margot Opdycke Lamme.  “Theorizing Public Relations History: The Roles of Strategic Intent and Human agency.”  Public Relations Review 42:5 (December 2016): 741-747.

Russell, Karen, and Cayce Myers.  “The Misunderstood Nineteenth Century U.S. Press Agent.”  Public Relations Review45:2 (June 2019): 246-257.

Russell, Karen Miller.  Promoting Monopoly: AT&T and the Politics of Public Relations, 1876-1941.  New York: Peter Lang, 2020.

Scott, David Meerman, and Richard Jurek.  Marketing the Moon: The Selling of the Apollo Lunar Program.  Cambridge: MIT Press, 2014.

Sheehan, Steven T.  “The Rise and Fall of the Consumer’s Democracy: Class, Consumption, Manhood, and Citizenship in American Public Relations and Popular Culture.”  PhD dissertation, Indiana University, 2003.

Sicilia, David. “The Corporation under Siege: Social Movements, Regulation, Public Relations, and Tort Law since the Second World War.” In Constructing Corporate America: History, Politics, Culture, eds. Kenneth Lipartito and David Sicilia, 188–222. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

St. John, Burton.  “A View That’s Fit to Print: The National Association of Manufacturers’ Free Enterprise Rhetoric as Integration Propaganda in the New York Times, 1937-1939.”  Journalism Studies 11:3 (2010): 377-392.

St. John, Burton, Margot Opdycke Lamme, and Jacquie L’Etang, eds.  Pathways to Public Relations: Histories of Practice and Profession.  New York: Routledge, 2014.

Stole, Inger L.  Advertising on Trial: Consumer Activism and Corporate PR in the 1930s.  Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006.

Stole, Inger.  “Persuasion, Patriotism, and PR: US Advertising in the Second World War.” Journal of Historical Research in Marketing 5:1 (2013): 27-46.

Straughan, Dulcie M.  “Women’s Work: Public Relations Efforts of the US Children’s Bureau to Reduce Infant and Maternal Mortality, 1912-1921.” Public Relations Review 27 (2001)” 337-351.

Straughan, Dulcie M.   “Lift Every Voice and Sing”: The Public Relations Efforts of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, 1960-65.”  Public Relations Review 30 (2004): 49-60.

Straughan, Dulcie M.  “Lifting as We Climb”: The Role of the National Association Notes in Furthering the Issues Agenda of the National Association of Colored Women, 1897-1920.”  Media History Monographs 8:2 (2006).

Strauss, Jessalynn R.  “From the Last Frontier to the New Cosmopolitan: A History of Casino Public Relations in Las Vegas.” Public Relations Review 39:2 (June 2013): 124-130.

Sullivan, Sara. “Corporate Discourses of Sponsored Films of Steel Production in the United States, 1936–1956.” Velvet Light Trap 72 (Fall 2013): 33–43.

Swenson, Rebecca.  “Parasocial Engagement and Starting a Corporate Family in Ford Times, 1908-1917.”  Journal of Magazine Media 17:2 (Winter 2017): 1-18.

Tedlow, Richard S. Keeping the Corporate Image: Public Relations and Business, 1900-1950. Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press, 1979.

Titus, A. Costandina. “Selling the Bomb: Public Relations Efforts by the Atomic Energy Commission During the 1950s and Early 1960s.” Government Publications Review 16:1 (1989): 15-29.

Tye, Larry.  The Father of Spin: Edward R. Bernays and the Birth of Public Relations. New York: Crown Publishing, 1998.

Vos, Tim P.  “Explaining the Origins of Public Relations: Logics of Historical Explanation.” Journal of Public Relations Research 23:2 (April 2011): 119-140.

Walker, S. H., and Paul Aklar.  Business Finds its Voice: Management’s Efforts to Sell the Business Idea to the Public.  New York: Harper & Bros., 1938.

Watson, Tom, ed.  Perspectives on Public Relations Historiography and Historical Theorization: Other Voices.  New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.

Whyte, Jr., William H.  Is Anybody Listening?  How and Why U.S. Business Fumbles When it Talks With Human Beings.  New York: Simon and Schuster, 1952. 

Willmetts, Simon.  “The CIA and the Invention of Tradition.”  Journal of Intelligence History 14:2 (June 2015): 112-128.   

Wood, Leland K. “When the Locomotive Puffs: Corporate Public Relations of the First Transcontinental Railroad Builders 1863–1869.”  PhD dissertation, Ohio University, 2009.

Ziaukas, Tim.  “The Titanic and Public Relations: A Case Study.”  Journal of Public Relations Research 11:2 (1999): 105-119.

Zoch, Lynn M., Dustin W. Supa, and Debra R. VanTuyll.  “The Portrayal of Public Relations in the Era of Ivy Lee Through the Lens of the New York Times.” Public Relations Review 40:4 (2014): 723-732.

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