All the Worst Humans: How I Made News for Dictators, Tycoons, and Politicians | Phil Elwood
A bridge-burning, riotous memoir by a top PR operative in Washington who exposes the secrets of the $129-billion industry that controls so much of what we see and hear in the mediafrom a man who used to pull the strings, and who is now pulling back the curtain. After nearly two decades in the Washington PR business, Elwood wants to come clean, by exposing the dark underbelly of the very industry thats made him so successful. The first step is revealing exactly what hes been up to for the past twenty yearsand it isnt pretty. Elwood has worked for a murderers row of questionable clients, including Gaddafi, Assad, and the government of Qatar. In All the Worst Humans, Elwood unveils how the PR business works, and how the truth gets made, spun, and sold to the publicnot shying away from the gritty details of his unlikely career. This is a piercing look into the corridors of money, power, politics, and control, all told in Elwoods disarmingly funny and entertaining voice. He recounts a four-day Las Vegas bacchanal with a dictators son, plotting communications strategies against a terrorist organization in Western Africa, and helping to land a Middle Eastern dictators wife a glowing profile in Vogue on the same time the Arab Spring broke out. And he reveals all his slippery tricks for seducing journalists in order to create chaos and ultimately cover for politicians, dictators, and spiesthe industry-secret tactics that led to his rise as a political PR pro. Along the way, Phil walks the halls of the Capitol, rides in armored cars through Abuja, and watches his client lose his annual income at the roulette table. But as he moved up the ranks, he felt worse and worse about the sleaziness of it alluntil Elwood receives a shocking wake-up call from the FBI. This risky game nearly cost Elwood his life and his freedom. Seeing the light, Elwood decides to change his ways, and his clients, and to tell the full truth about who is the worst human.