#Book Club — The Later Years

Imagine having such a profound impact on an industry that your teachings were still relevant nearly a quarter-century after you had died.
That’s the case for Edward Bernays, the Austrian-American known as “the father of public relations.”
At a recent gathering of PR pros, a fellow PRSA Fellow of mine, Paula Pedene, gave me a copy of The Later Years, Public Relations Insights, 1956-1986 by Edward L. Bernays.
The books were given to those in attendance at the last PRSA Fellows’ dinner and she was thoughtful enough to grab a copy for me as I was not in able to attend.
The book is a collection of Bernays’ Public Relations Quarterly columns, and features dozens of timeless PR topics.  Among them:

• Down With Image, Up With Reality
• Education for PR: A Call to Action
• Defining Public Relations (which the HMA Team has written about several times, including here, here and here.)
• Do Our Educational Facilities Meet Our Needs?
• Advertising Agencies, Stay Out of Public Relations!
• Old People
• Let’s Exclude the Incompetent and Unqualified from Public Relations

And the list goes on.
It’s almost as if he was looking into the future.