The People's Choice: How the Voter Makes Up His Mind in a Presidential Campaign
New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1944.
First edition. Signed by Paul Felix Lazarsfeld on front free endpaper, inscribed to former owner, whose name is written above on the same page.vi, [2], 178 pp. Publisher's dark green cloth lettered in gilt. A Good copy lacking a jacket, with dulled spine lettering, worn tips, some underlining and a few marginal notations in pencil and variously colored inks, general reading wear.
A scarce signature from Lazarsfeld, the Austrian-American sociologist and founder of the Bureau of Applied Social Research at Columbia University. This influential work was a key development in the two-step flow of communication model theory, which posited "opinion leaders" within communities whose views are parroted by the masses.; this was a refutation of the even more top-down "hypodermic needle" or "magic bullet" theory. According to the current publishers of the book, Columbia University Press, who have kept it in print since 1948, the three co-authors "found that media such as newspapers and radio and campaign advertising did not have a profound influence on individual voting habits. Instead, interpersonal interactions and word of mouth were more significant for most voters. They argued that mass media reached a small but crucial subset of people, who passed information on to less avid media consumers." It has become a classic in the field of communications.
Price: $2,000.00