216 pages / 5.50 x 8.50 inches / 28 halftones
Performing Arts / Media Studies
The grainy black-and-white television ad shows a young girl in a flower-filled meadow, holding a daisy and plucking its petals, which she counts one by one. As the camera slowly zooms in on her eye, a man’s solemn countdown replaces hers. At zero the little girl’s eye is engulfed by an atomic mushroom cloud. As the inferno roils in the background, President Lyndon B. Johnson’s voice intones, “These are the stakes—to make a world in which all of God’s children can live, or to go into the dark. We must either love each other, or we must die.”
Robert Mann is the author of numerous books, most recently Becoming Ronald Reagan: The Rise of a Conservative Icon and Backrooms and Bayous: My Life in Louisiana Politics. He holds the Manship Chair in Journalism at the Manship School of Mass Communication, Louisiana State University.
"Disguised as a slender monograph, Daisy Petals and Mushroom Clouds is actually a political thriller. Robert Mann, a journalism professor at Louisiana State University, worked in the mosh pit of Louisiana politics when it was firmly Democratic, and his expertise is evident as he dissects the watershed presidential election of 1964... Mr. Mann's book is as carefully conducted as a symphony."--Wall Street Journal
"Daisy Petals and Mushroom Clouds is a great read for anyone interested in what goes on behind the scenes in politics. Why do campaigns behave the way they do? How was campaign strategy implemented through advertising during the infancy of television? It’s a short (156 pages), rich look at a very important turning point in the history of American political campaigns: the birth of negative ads."--Charlie Cook, The National Journal
“Essential to understanding the history of television spots in American presidential campaigns.”—Journal of American History
“A fascinating read. . . . Robert Mann provides a valuable and compelling history of the Daisy Girl ad—and so much more, too.”—Political Communication
“A thoughtful examination of the culture and times out of which the ad arose. . . Because of the book, we finally have a thorough and well-written descriptive history and case study of an ad that Mann correctly credits with changing American politics and political advertising.”—Political Science Quarterly
“This fascinating and well-written book examines the significance of Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1964 “daisy” television advertisement. . . . This book is a great read and is recommended to anyone interested in the 1964 campaign and/or advertising and television history.”—Journalism History
“A thoughtful and engaging account of the television advertisement that made a huge splash in the U.S. presidential election of 1964. . . . Daisy Petals and Mushroom Clouds is a pleasure to read. Brief but to the point, it has a lively narrative that captures and holds one’s attention. . . . The story itself remains fascinating from beginning to end.”—Journal of Cold War Studies
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