On the Campaign Trail: The Long Road of Presidential Politics, 1860-2004

This lavish album collects campaign posters, memorabilia and hundreds of candid photos spanning the period from Harrison's 1840 campaign to W's flight-suited strut on the deck of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln. Schoen, a political consultant and author of a Daniel Moynihan biography, includes breezy overviews of individual campaigns and the historical development of campaigning traditions and techniques, but the book is dominated by the pictures. A few photo essays cover perennial campaign themes like whistle-stop train tours and baby-kissing, but the bulk are arranged chronologically by election contest, forming a blizzard of visual impressions of the hoopla, doldrums and media-obsessed choreography of electioneering. The volume includes many of the most famous images of the past century: the Dewey-beats-Truman headline; a fatally wounded Bobby Kennedy; hippies vs. cops at the 1968 Democratic convention; Nancy Reagan worshipping a Jumbotron-sized Ronald; Gary Hart and Donna Rice cuddling beside the S.S. Monkey Business; Michael Dukakis in a tank; Bill Clinton tootling his saxophone on the Arsenio Hall show; the Howard Dean scream. The result is an evocative, if not terribly enlightening, trip down memory lane for political buffs and general readers alike.