Explores the 25 most negative electoral campaigns in American history. The American electorate has a love-hate relationship with negative campaigning, claiming to despise it while at the same time paying an increasing amount of attention to negative ads and tactics. Swint gathers the most compelling of these campaigns from the two "Golden Ages" of negative campaigning - 1864 to 1892 and from 1988 to the present - in addition to some that fall outside those demarcations, and ranks them in descending order, from No. 25 to No. 1. "Mudslingers" covers presidential, senatorial, gubernatorial, and mayoral races and chronicles the dirtiest, most low-down campaign tactics of all time. The list includes presidential campaigns from 1800, when the disputed outcome of the race between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams had to be decided by the House of Representatives, to 2004, when George W. Bush beat John Kerry after one of the nastiest showdowns on record. The author looks at the role of the media and increasing campaign spending in fuelling the culture of negative campaigning. These fascinating stories from the annals of negative campaigning will entertain as well as educate, reminding us that it was (almost) ever thus, the next time we are tempted to decry the current climate. This book includes: many colourful campaigns, including the last presidential election; and also photos and sidebars and an appendix of primary sources.

Kerwin Swint is an author, speaker, and professor of politics at Kennesaw State University in Atlanta. Specializing in Campaigns and Elections and Mass Media, he or his work has appeared in a number of national and international media, including CNN, FOX News, the BBC, the ABC program The View, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, NPR, The Toronto Star, The Daily Mail (UK), Publisher's Weekly, Salon, Slate, and numerous other media. He lives outside Atlanta with his wife and three kids.