Known as the ‘the father of public relations’, this innocent title dodges what many accuse him of – being the father of the manipulation of the masses and the inventor of marketing and modern propaganda. The Austro-American Edward L. Bernays, a double nephew of Sigmund Freud, was a pioneering spin doctor who lived an interesting 103-year-long life (1891–1995). Highly effective but contemptuous of the people he targeted, in equal measure, he created theories and practices to guide them and to make them do whatever those who paid him wanted. He knew how to create desires and needs, instigate campaigns (often nefarious) and controversy, start new fashions and habits, spur love and hate, and create illusions and deceptions. He shook individual beliefs and the collective imagination. He believed that you should make someone beg to be sold a product rather than beg them to buy it. His published books do not hide his ‘Machiavellian’ plans for de facto power and psychological control. From national and international political conspiracies to financial and commercial plots, he applied himself to everything with diabolical resourcefulness and astute cynicism, making himself indispensable to those who hired him. He was considered by Time magazine to be one of the hundred most influential Americans of the 20th century. Michael Molnar, a historian of psychoanalysis, researcher, and former director of the Freud Museum, provides a profile of Edward L. Bernays, whose ideas and methods are so visible in the world today. There are even some who suggest that his books may sit on the bedside tables of many of our current leaders…