Nicholas Samstag

Nicholas Samstag was a practitioner of Public Relations, an author, and promotion director of TIME from 1943 through 1960. Samstag died of cancer in Manhattan on April 5, 1968 at 64 years of age. The TIME Magazine article marking his death read:

A recognized, often flamboyant practitioner of his trade, Samstag wrote a number of successful books, including Bamboozled and The Uses of Ineptitude and, while running his own agency after 1960, took ads in Manhattan newspapers offering to teach anyone everything he knew about the advertising and promotion business—for a fee of $10,000. The day after Samstag's death, his fifth wife, Suzanne, 38, was found dead in her room at a Kennedy Airport hotel.

ref: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,900096,00.html

In Edward Bernays' book The Engineering of Consent, Public Relations is defined as "the attempt, by information, persuasion, and adjustment, to engineer public support for an activity, cause, movement, or institution" (pp. 3–4), in short to construct a culture based on specific behavioral controls. A junior associate of Bernays at the time, Nicholas Samstag, ends his chapter on "Strategy" with these words: "It may be said that to take advantage of a man's credulity, to exploit his misapprehensions, to capitalize on his ignorance is morally reprehensible—and this may well be the case. [. . .] Where, then does the author of this chapter stand on these difficult and reproachful questions? I do not quite know—and I am neither contented nor arrogant in that unsatisfactory answer. But this should be said: a strategy is an instrument for winning." He then closes by discussing warfare and business as synonymous, suggesting generals and bosses "must make terms with their own consciences. I cannot help them there" (p. 137).

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Name	Samstag, Nicholas
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Date of death	1968
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