Edward Bernays was born in Vienna in 1891, and his family emigrated to the United States shortly afterward. He was Sigmund Freud’s nephew, and Freud was a mentor. Bernays carefully considered Freud’s insights on the human psyche in his work as a press agent. First working in the New York theater world, Bernays was hired by the Committee on Public Information to create pro-war propaganda in the United States and Latin America. During the Paris Peace Conference, Bernays realized that propaganda work did not need to be confined to times of war and crisis and had useful applications in peacetime, from promoting business interests to influencing public health and education. Examples of his work included the promotion of disposable paper cups (Dixie Cups) and the presidential campaigns of Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover.

Bernays reprised his role as a wartime publicist during World War II and the Cold War, working for the Office of War Information and the United States Information Agency. Famously, he collaborated with the United Fruit Company as they worked with the CIA to orchestrate a coup of the democratically elected government of Guatemala in 1954. While he participated in this coup, he rejected other anti-democratic clients such as the Nazi party, Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, and the Somoza family, a dynasty of dictators that ruled Nicaragua between 1936 and 1979.