North American Perspectives on the Development of Public Relations Other Voices

This is the seventh volume of The National Perspectives on the Development of Public Relations: Other Voices series, which is the first to offer an authentic worldwide view of the history of public relations freed from a corporatist framework.. 

The series features seven books, six of which cover continental and regional groups including (Book 1) Asia and Australasia, (Book 2) Eastern Europe and Russia, (Book 3) Middle East and Africa, (Book 4) Latin America and Caribbean, (Book 5) Western Europe, and this volume, (Book 7) North America. The sixth volume featured five essays on new and revised historiographic and theoretical approaches.

Written by leading public relations historians and scholars, some histories of national public relations development are offered for the first time while others are reinterpreted using new archival sources and other historiographical approaches. The National Perspectives on the Development of Public Relations: OtherVoices series makes a major contribution to the wider knowledge of PR’s history.

Introduction (Tom Watson).- Chapter 1 United States – antecedents and proto-PR (Cayce Myers).- Chapter 2 United States – development and expansion of public relations (Margot Opdycke Lamme, Karen Miller Russell, Denise Hill and Shelley Spector).- Chapter 3 Canada – development and expansion of public relations (Amy Thurlow).- Chapter 4 Public relations education and the development of professionalization in Canada and the United States (Donald K. Wright and Terence (Terry) Flynn).- Chapter 5 Government public relations in Canada and the United States (Mordecai Lee, Fraser Likely and Jean Valin).- Chapter 6 Entertainment publicity and public relations (Donn J. Tilson).- Chapter 7 Political communications and lobbying in the United States (Edward J. Downes, Dustin Supa and Esther Austin).- Chapter 8 The historiography of North American public relations (Karla K. Gower).

Tom Watson is Emeritus Professor in the Faculty of Media & Communication at Bournemouth University. He is the founder of the International History of Public Relations Conference. Tom researches public relations history, as well as practice issues. He is a Fellow of the CIPR and a PRCA Founding Fellow.