Propaganda & Extremism

This is a working bibliography. Frequent additions, subtractions, and edits should be expected.
UPDATED 24 January, 2026

The topic of research is the origins of modern American propaganda, how it influenced the growth and spread of extremism in America, including both internal propaganda and the response to external influences. The research question is, what are the long-term cultural impacts of sustained or intensive propaganda campaigns? The research question will be answered by examining how WWI and Interwar propaganda campaigns affected American culture, exposing it to ideological extremism. This research is confined to 1917 with the formation of the Committee on Public Information, the Interwar period, and through 1939 to keep it manageable for the dissertation. Post-doc, the research will expand beyond this period and the United States.

  • Axelrod, Alan. Selling the Great War: The Making of American Propaganda. Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
  • Bauer, A. J., & A. M. Nadler. “Propaganda Analysis revisited.” Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) Misinformation Review. 2021.
  • Berger, Karl. Broadsides & Bayonets: The Propaganda War of the American Revolution. Presidio Press, 1976.
  • Berger, J. M. Extremism. MIT press, 2018.
  • Berger, J.M. Extremist Construction of Identity: How Escalating Demands for Legitimacy Shape and Define In-Group and Out-Group Dynamics. International Centre for Counter-Terrorism, 2022. https://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep29402.
  • Berger, J.M. “The Dangerous Spread of Extremist Manifestos.” Yerepouni Daily News, Feb 27, 2019. , https://www.proquest.com/newspapers/dangerous-spread-extremist-manifestos/docview/2186076175/se-2.
  • Berger, J.M. Turner Legacy: The Storied Origins and Enduring Impact of White Nationalism’s Deadly Bible. International Centre for Counter-Terrorism, 2022. https://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep29403.
  • Bernays, Edward L. Propaganda: The Public Mind in the Making. Horace Liveright, 1928.
  • Bernays, Edward L. Biography of an Idea: Memoirs of Public Relations Counsel. Simon and Schuster, 1965.
  • Bernays, Edward L. and Mark Crispin Miller. Propaganda. Ig Publications, 2005.
  • Blum, Edward J. Reforging the White Republic: Race, Religion, and American Nationalism, 1865 – 1898. Louisiana State University Press, 2005.
  • Bradley, Patricia. Slavery, Propaganda, and the American Revolution. University Press of Mississippi, 2012.
  • Bryant, Mark. World War I In Cartoons. Grub Street, 2006.
  • Bryant, Mark. World War II In Cartoons. Gallery Books, 1989.
  • Bullard, Arthur. The Diplomacy of the Great War. Self-published essay, Undated.
  • Carlson, John Roy. The Plotters. E.P. Dutton & Co., 1946.
  • Carlson, John Roy. Under Cover: My Four Years in the Nazi Underworld of America. E.P. Dutton & Co., 1943.
  • Castronovo, Russ. Propaganda 1776: Secrets, Leaks, and Revolutionary Communications in Early America. Oxford University Press, 2014.
  • Clements, Kendrick A. The Presidency of Woodrow Wilson. University Press of Kansas, 1992.
  • Creel, George. How We Advertised America: The First Telling of the Amazing Story of the Committee on Public Information That Carried the Gospel of Americanism to Every Corner of the Globe. Harper & Brothers, 1920.
  • Creel, George. Rebel at Large: Recollections of Fifty Crowded Years. G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1947.
  • Creel, George. Wilson and the Issues. The Century Co., 1916.
  • Dew, Charles B. Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War. University of Virginia Press, 2016.
  • Engelman, Ralph and Carey Shenkman. A Century of Repression: The Espionage Act and Freedom of the Press. University of Illinois Press, 2022.
  • Farago, Ladislas. German Psychological Warfare. Coachwhip Publications, 2018.
  • Fondren, Elisabeth, ““Breathless Zeal and Careless Confidence”: German Propaganda in World War I (1914-1918).” LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 4635.  2018. https://repository.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/4635.
  • Fondren, Elisabeth. “Fighting an Armed Doctrine: The Struggle to Modernize German Propaganda During World War I (1914–1918).” Journalism & Communication Monographs, 23 (4), 256-317. 2021.
    https://doi.org/10.1177/15226379211050684.
  • Fondren, Elisabeth and John Maxwell Hamilton. “The Universal Laws of Propaganda: World War I and the Origins of Government Manufacture of Opinion.” Journal of Intelligence History 22 (1), 1–19. 2023. https://doi.org/10.1080/16161262.2022.2036498.
  • Fondren, Elisabeth. “’We are Propagandists for Democracy’: The Institute for Propaganda Analysis Pioneering Media Literacy Efforts to Fight Disinformation (1937–1942),” American Journalism, 38 (3), 258-291, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1080/08821127.2021.1950481.
  • Foner, Eric. Reconstruction Updated Edition: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877. HarperCollins Publishers, 2014.
  • Farwell, Byron. Over There: The United States in the Great War, 1917-1918. Norton, 1999.
  • Gallagher, Charles R. Nazis of Copley Square: The Forgotten Story of the Christian Front. Harvard University Press, 2021.
  • Hamilton, John Maxwell. Manipulating the Masses: Woodrow Wilson and the Birth of American Propaganda. Louisiana State University Press, 2024.
  • Herman, Edward S. “The Propaganda Model Revisited.” Monthly Review, 01, 2018. 42.
  • Hetherington, Marc J. and Jonathan Daniel Weiler. Authoritarianism and Polarization in American Politics. Cambridge University Press, 2010.
  • Hummel, William, and Keith Huntress. The Analysis of Propaganda. William Sloane Associates, 1949.
  • Jowett, Garth and Victoria O’Donnell. Propaganda and Persuasion. Sage, 2006.
  • Keegan, John. The First World War. Vintage / Random House, 2000.
  • Kingsbury, Celia Malone. For Home and Country: World War I Propaganda on the Home Front. University of Nebraska Press, 2010.
  • Lebovic, Sam. State of Silence: The Espionage Act and the Rise of America’s Secrecy Regime. Basic Books, 2023.
  • Lehr, Dick. The Birth of a Movement: How Birth of a Nation Ignited the Battle for Civil Rights. PublicAffairs, 2014.
  • Lears, T. J. Jackson. Rebirth of a Nation: The Making of Modern America, 1877-1920. Harper Collins, 2010.
  • MacWilliams, Matthew C. On Fascism: 12 Lessons from American History. St. Martin’s Press, 2020.
  • Mindich, David T. Z. Just the Facts: How “Objectivity” Came to Define American Journalism. New York University Press, 1998.
  • Minear, Richard H., and Art Spiegelman. Dr. Seuss Goes to War: The World War II Editorial Cartoons of Theodor Seuss Geisel. The New press, 1999.
  • Pestritto, Ronald J. Woodrow Wilson and the Roots of Modern Liberalism. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2005.
  • Rhodes, Anthony Richard Ewart, and Victor Margolin. Propaganda: The Art of Persuasion: World War II. Wellfleet Press, 1987.
  • Rid, Thomas. Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020.
  • Schudson, Michael. Discovering the News: A Social History of American Newspapers. Basic Books, 1978.
  • Stamm, Michael. Dead Tree Media: Manufacturing the Newspaper in Twentieth-Century North America. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018.
    Stanley, Jason. How Propaganda Works. Princeton University Press, 2017.
  • Trent, Deborah L. ed. Nontraditional U.S. Public Diplomacy: Past, Present, and Future. Public Diplomacy Council, 2016.
  • Tuchman, Barbara Wertheim. The Guns of August. Ballantine, 1994.
  • Tye, Larry and Edward L. Bernays. The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays & the Birth of Public Relations. Holt, 2002.
  • Whitman, James Q. Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law. Princeton University Press, 2018.
  • Wilson, Woodrow. The Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson: The New Democracy Presidential Messages, Addresses, and Other Papers (1913-1917). Harper & Brothers, 1926.