"[10] Dezenhall's published writing on public relations focuses on how a celebrity or corporation can successfully defend their reputation in the face of "a lawsuit, a sex scandal, a defective product, or allegations of insider trading", among other crises.
[14] In a series of emails that were leaked to the journal Nature, Dezenhall concedes that "it's hard to fight an adversary that manages to be both elusive and in possession of a better message: Free information", and suggests joining forces with think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute in an attempt to persuade key players of the potential risks of unfiltered access.
"[16] In 2001 as media stories about the abuse of oxycontin produced by Purdue Pharma received wide attention, Dezenhall worked for the company along with Sally Satel, an AEI Fellow, to counter the bad publicity.
He first chronicled the diaries of the late mobster Meyer Lansky in The Baltimore Sun in 2001; two years later he published Money Wanders, a fictional account of organized crime in Atlantic City, where Dezenhall spent his summers growing up.
His 2018 non-fiction book (coauthored with Gus Russo) Best of Enemies: The Last Great Spy Story of the Cold War chronicles the friendship between the KGB's Gennady Vasilenko and the CIA's Jack Platt.