Roderick P. Hart (Ph.D., Pennsylvania State University) holds the Shivers Chair in Communication and Government at The University of Texas at Austin and serves as director of the Annette Strauss Institute for Civic Participation. His area of special interest is politics and the mass media and he is the author of twelve books, the most recent of which is Political Keywords: Using Language that Uses Us (Oxford University Press, 2005). Other book titles include: Campaign Talk: Why Elections Are Good for Us (Princeton University Press, 2000), Public Communication (Harper & Row, 1975, 1983), The Political Pulpit (Purdue University Press, 1977), Verbal Style and the Presidency (Academic Press, 1984), The Sound of Leadership (University of Chicago Press, 1987), Modern Rhetorical Criticism (Harper, 1990) and Seducing America: How Television Charms the Modern Voter (Oxford, 1994).