Nicknamed "the father of public relations," Edward Bernays was a pioneer in the fields of propaganda and public relations, combining theories on crowd psychology with the psychoanalytical ideas of his uncle, Sigmund Freud, to become the first thinker to explain how corporations and politicians could manipulate public opinion. "Perhaps the most significant social, political, and industrial fact about the present century is the increased attention which is paid to public opinion," he wrote in his first book,Crystallizing Public Opinion(1923), which set down the principles that would come to govern the modern public relations industry.

A foundational text in the history of marketing and public relations, this first edition ofCrystallizing Public Opinionin nearly fifty years features an introduction by Mark Crispin Miller.