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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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).

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.

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.

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