Book excerpt: This volume is partof a series of anthologies which cover various topics in the study, teaching, and practice of political communication. The purpose of the series is to make available to researchers, teachers, students, and other specialists, findings, analyses, and commentaries which are representative of current scholarship in the rapidly evolving field of political communication. The focus of this vol­ume--political advertising, its history, forms, styles, settings, uses, and effects--seems appropriate because there are few, if any, forms of politi­cal communication which are more prevalent, more expensive, more highly developed, and which have been the object of more controversy and less serious scholarship than political advertising, especially the political commercial made for television.