Overview

In 1917, a muckraking journalist from the West created the first and only official ministry of propaganda in the history of the United States. It was a plainclothes army of 150,000, answerable to a single man, a force that transformed America into a nation of warriors and that was instrumental in elevating the United States to a position of world power. It is one of modern history's most chilling ironies that the idealistic administration vowing to ""make the world safe for democracy"" created the first great propaganda machine of the twentieth century, helping to enable the far more notorious apparatus of the Third Reich. The President's Drummer is the story of George Creel and the epoch-making but nearly forgotten agency he built and led. It will tell how he came to build the agency - how, with nearly the six-day speed of Genesis, he created it, and how he ran it, using the emerging industries of mass advertising and public relations to transform America into a nation of warriors. It was a force whose effects were felt throughout the twentieth century and continue to be felt, perhaps even more strongly, today.

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9780230605039

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'Axelrod is an excellent writer, and the book helps us understand the tensions between freedom and security that exist in our democracy.' - Library Journal 'A useful exhumation of an almost forgotten piece of American history and a timely meditation on the conflict between free speech and security.' - Kirkus 'This is an important story involving a remarkable character.' - Publishers Weekly

'Axelrod is an excellent writer, and the book helps us understand the tensions between freedom and security that exist in our democracy.' - Library Journal 'A useful exhumation of an almost forgotten piece of American history and a timely meditation on the conflict between free speech and security.' - Kirkus 'This is an important story involving a remarkable character.' - Publishers Weekly

The little-known story of George Creel and the Committee on Public Information, America's first and only ministry of propaganda. In 1916, Woodrow Wilson campaigned on the slogan, He kept us out of war! Within months after his reelection he sought congressional authority for a war to make the world safe for democracy. To marshal his determinedly isolationist countrymen, Wilson turned to Creel, whose background in political journalism and progressive politics ideally suited him for the job of promoting the president's lofty war aims. Although he invokes influential ad- and public-relations men Ivy Lee and Edward Bernays, historian Axelrod (Profiles in Folly: History's Worst Decisions and Why They Went Wrong, 2008, etc.) demonstrates that Creel accomplished something far more sophisticated than simply selling the Great War. Thanks to the Espionage and Sedition Acts and a friendly understanding with newspaper editors, Creel had a monopoly on war information. Aided by his recruitment of leading figures in all walks of American life, his careful selection of helpful facts and his saturation of the public through press, pictures, movies, public meetings and rallies, Creel sought to transform the public mind and make it receptive to Wilson's message. With especially fine passages about the Four-Minute Men, community members recruited to address movie audiences while projectionists switched reels, and the Division of Pictorial Publicity, whose members included Charles Dana Gibson, George Bellows and N.C. Wyeth, Axelrod shows Creel's propaganda machine in action. He marvels at Creel's efficiency and credits him with honorable, if occasionally disingenuous intentions. He also observes that what Wilson and Creel saw as a morally neutral program, necessitated by war, could easily have become - as Hitler and Goebbels, who carefully studied the Creel's techniques, later proved - a monster.A useful exhumation of an almost forgotten piece of American history and a timely meditation on the conflict between free speech and security. (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Information

ALAN AXELROD is the author of numerous popular books on military history, general history, American history and historically rooted business and management books, including Bradley and Patton in The Great Generals Series, the BusinessWeek bestsellers Patton on Leadership and Elizabeth I, CEO, as well as a host of encyclopedias and other trade reference titles. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia, UK.

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