Campaign Talk: Why Elections are Good for Us by Roderick Hart was named the best political communication book of the last decade by the American Political Science Association.

Hart conducts a long-term (1948-1996) analysis of thousands of texts from several genres of campaign discourse -- including campaign speeches, print and television news coverage, debates, advertisements and letters to the editor -- with a computerized content analysis program and sheds light on the important role campaigns play in sustaining democracy by creating a national dialogue.