All The Worst Humans
How I Made News for Dictators, Tycoons and Politicians
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- € 11,99
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'Hilarious and harrowing, and hard to put down' Christopher Buckley, author of Thank You for Smoking
'Might be a career-destroying book... highly enjoyable' Daily Telegraph
'A spin doctor to the rich and corrupt spills his secrets... starts with the crack of a Jack Reacher thriller' The New York Times
The man who used to pull the strings of the global media is now pulling back the curtain: a bridge-burning, riotous confession by a top PR operative who exposes the secrets of the $129-billion industry that controls so much of what we see and hear in the media.
After nearly two decades in the PR business, Phil Elwood wants to come clean, by exposing the dark underbelly of the very industry that's made him so successful. The first step is revealing exactly what he's been up to for the past twenty years - and it isn't pretty.
From helping win the Qatar World Cup bid, to a four-day Las Vegas bacchanal with a dictator's son, and helping to land a Middle Eastern dictator's wife a glowing profile in Vogue at the same time the Arab Spring broke out, Elwood reveals all his slippery tricks for seducing journalists in order to create chaos and cover for politicians, dictators and spies.
But as Phil moved up the ranks, he felt worse and worse about the sleaziness of it all - and his role in it - until he received a shocking wake-up call from the FBI. This risky game nearly cost Phil his life and his freedom. Seeing the light, he has decided to tell the full truth about who is the worst human.
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'A rollicking, unexpectedly affecting story. . . It's going to be one of the big, buzzy Beltway books of the year.' Politico
'Phil Elwood has written a book about his Washington life that's part therapy, part cautionary tale ? and quite funny . . . What makes Elwood's story stand out from the typical Washington read is that his personal demons are so intertwined with his professional choices . . . Elwood's prose is zippy, even Sorkin-esque, and he relishes dark humor.' The Washington Post
'If Hunter S. Thompson billed clients by the hour, it would look like All The Worst Humans by Phil Elwood. The pacing and storytelling propel the book's epic sweep across the darkside of DC and global hotspots. Even the most experienced in PR will learn things they did not know, and Elwood's gripping personal story is an unexpected and wild ride.' Bill McCarren, former Executive Director, National Press Club
'A lively, often hilarious, blood-chilling tale.' Sam Kashner, Air Mail
'A redemption story about becoming a better human, a story Elwood tells with vulnerability, heart, and brutal honesty.' James Kirchick, New York Times bestselling author of Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington
'An exhilarating ride through the underbelly of global power structures.' Ben Smith, author of Traffic and editor in chief of Semafor
'I raced through this book and was gripped by every page.' Sophie Heawood
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.
