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Mann, Robert. Daisy Petals and Mushroom Clouds: LBJ, Barry Goldwater, and the Ad That Changed American Politics. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University- Press, 2011. 216 pp. $22.50.
This fascinating and well-written book examines the significance of Lyndon B. Johnson's 1964 "daisy" television advertisement, which showed a young girl peacefully counting daisy petals before a male voice interrupts with a countdown transitioning to the image of a nuclear mushroom cloud. The advrtisement closes with Johnson's voice: "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." These powerful words and images would permanently redirect the focus of political advertising.
Robert Mann, a Louisiana State University journalism professor and former aide to three United States senators and one Louisiana governor, tells the story of the advertisement's conceptualization and production. He uses this to frame a broader political narrative, addressing the complex interrelationships among television, sociology, advertising, and politics in the mid-1960s.
Though the...