Speak Up for Democracy: What You Can Do -- A Practical Plan of Action for Every American Citizen
New York: The Viking Press, 1940.
First and only edition. xiv, [2], 127, [1] pp. Staple-bound in publisher's printed wraps. Good condition with light soiling and moderate edgewear and several creases to rear cover; wraps detached from textblock. Light toning to contents and bookseller ticket to first page.
Edward Bernays was a groundbreaking publicist who developed the idea of public relations as a semi-scientific practice. The nephew of psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, Bernays was born in Austria but grew up in New York, graduating from Cornell University in 1912. He and his future wife Doris Fleischman opened a successful public relations office after the First World War, and Bernays authored several influential books, including Crystallizing Public Opinion (1923), Propaganda (1928), and Public Relations (1952). In this 1940 call to action, he advises ordinary men and women on how they can stand up to Communist, Nazi, and Fascist sympathizers within their own country:
"Don't think that you are powerless because you are only one of 130 million. In the final analysis, you are the soldiers upon whom the victory depends. Public opinion is the dominant factor in shaping our country's course. Public opinion, morale, is made of of individual opinions. You can influence the opinions and activities of others."
Bernays tells his reader how to communicate with radio stations and newspapers, how to speak well, how to advertise, how to develop leadership and plan events, and other essentials of what we might now call "grassroots organizing." Several pages are devoted to identifying the saboteurs of democracy: appeasers, anti-labor groups, anti-civil liberties groups, anti-alien groups, and super-patriots. A scarce publication from a pioneer of propaganda, distinctly of its time yet chillingly relevant.
Price: $850