All the Worst Humans: How I Made News for Dictators, Tycoons, and Politicians

A PR man with a newfound conscience recalls his propaganda campaigns in this raucous debut memoir. Elwood recaps his career at leading Washington, D.C., public relations firms and his strategies to promulgate spin concocted to serve his clients’ hidden agendas. These included a campaign to procure a congressional resolution opposing America’s bid for the 2022 soccer World Cup on the ground that the money should be spent on children’s physical education instead—a ploy that convinced FIFA to let his client, Qatar, stage the Cup—and a successful effort to get Vogue to write a puff piece on the wife of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad that painted the country as “a place without bombings, unrest or kidnappings.” Elwood hit bottom working for Psy Group, an Israeli company that peddled election-influencing services; his activities got him investigated by special counsel Robert Mueller, which provoked a nervous breakdown and suicide attempt. (Later chapters trace a redemptive upswing, which included doing PR for ketamine as an anti-depressant.) Elwood’s picaresque features mordantly funny scenes (a standout chapter involves shepherding client Muammar Gadafi’s deranged adult son Mutassim around Las Vegas) and a savvy exploration of the machinery of public relations, including how astroturfed nonprofits and content-hungry journalists function as PR mouthpieces. The result is an entertaining, wised-up account of the dark arts of reputation laundering. (June)