The profession of public relations lacks a serious, comprehensive history. Considering the power that we've evidenced throughout the years as practitioners, it seems somewhat ludicrous that we don't have at least one book we can point to with pride as a truly credible, challenging chronology and interpretation of PR's origins and actions, both good and bad. Suffice it to say, it will be a long time before we have such a tome.

While we wait, there are contributions in the professional literature that impart a meaningful, albeit skeletal, picture of our past and present. This abbreviated "mini-me" history is a modest example, compiled from research for chapters I have authored for textbooks and an international encyclopedia, and leavened by my personal experiences over more than 30 years in the profession, first in the corporate world, then in the nonprofit world, then in my own agency, which I sold in the early 1990's.

Most of the early chronological references and some of the interpretations come from two of the three extensive histories that we can call "our own": Edward L. Bernays' Public Relations (U. of Oklahoma, 1952), and Scott Cutlip's Public Relations History from the 17th to the 20th Century (Lawrence Erlbaum, 1995). I also gathered and checked a few facts in such leading textbooks as The Practice of Public Relations by Frasier Seitel (Prentice Hall), Effective Public Relations by Scott Cutlip and Alan Center (Prentice Hall), and This is PR: The Realities of Public Relations by Doug Newsom, Judy Van Slyke Turk and Dean Krukeberg (Wadsworth). Everyone in the profession should read at least one of these texts from cover to cover, and share it with colleagues.