Promoting Monopoly

Karen Miller Russell (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison) is Jim Kennedy Professor of New Media and Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Georgia. She is the author of The Voice of Business: Hill & Knowlton and Postwar Public Relations.

• List of Illustrations – Preface – Acknowledgements – "A Necessary Adjunct to Nearly All Commercial Enterprises": The Rise of Corporate Publicity in the United States – "To Undertake Something in the Missionary Line": William A. Hovey and Corporate Publicity at American Bell, 1876–1903 – "A Largely Random Basis": AT&T, Competition, and the Publicity Bureau, 1903–1907 – "One Policy, One System, Universal Service": Educating the Public, 1908–1913 – "We Are Really Governed by Publicity": Institutionalizing Public Relations, 1913–1926 – "To Serve Well We Must Earn Well": AT&T’s Financial Policy and the Great Depression, 1927–1934 – "All Business in a Democratic Country … Exists by Public Approval": The FCC Investigation, 1935–1941 – Conclusion "The Number One Public Relations Post in Industry": AT&T in U.S. Public Relations History – Index.

“In this deeply researched book, Karen Miller Russell advances the history of public relations and corporate communication in the United States through detailed analysis of AT&T/Bell’s launch, promotion and sustenance of telephony in a highly readable, scholarly manner. It is a major addition to the canon of communications history.”—Tom Watson, Founder, International History of Public Relations Conference