Product Description

Radio history is currently much talked about. Radio was the medium which 'defined and defied' American culture in the early 20th century, setting patterns for all media that followed. Topics include 1940s radio suspense drama, quiz shows, American propogandists for Axis Powers, The Green Hornet and race, black liberation radio, NPR, and Christian right and radio.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1112446 in Books
• Published on: 2001-10-19
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 448 pages

Review
"The contributors to this volume persuasively argue that the radio has been at the center of the American imaginative and political life in the twentieth century.an important and entertaining book by two leading scholars."
-Lary May, author of "The Big Tomorrow, Hollywood and the Politics of the American Way
"From music to mysteries, call-ins to comedy, advertising to advocacy, and religion to racial uplift, it's all here in ""Radio Reader."
-George Lipsitz, author of "Time Passages
"Radio had been ubiquitous in American life since the late 1920s. With this seminal book, we may now begin to understand what this has meant to our civilization. Bravo!."
-J. Fred MacDonald, Professor Emeritus, Northeastern Illinois University
"Long marginalized in American media historiography, radio finally receives fitting scholarly treatment. "Radio Reader should be required reading for any serious student of media history."
-Robert C. Allen, Professor of History, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
""Radio Reader re-invents the radio as an object of study by letting us hear disembodied and contradictory voices from the past. An indispensable collection!."
-Janet Staiger, William P. Hobby Centennial Professor of Communication, University of Texas at Austin.

From the Back Cover
While cultural historians and media scholars have been looking at television for decades, they have only recently turned their eyes (and ears) to radio. Studies of television rarely acknowledge that many of its forms-soap operas, situation comedies, quiz shows, sportscasts, etc.-all evolved out of the earlier medium. The essays collected here demonstrate that radio set patterns that have effected all forms of media that have followed it, and also look at how it has survived the coming of media that supposedly made it obsolete.

Radio Reader investigates compelling topics like gender in postwar suspense dramas, racial representation and The Green Hornet, American radio propagandists for the Axis Powers, and the history of National Public Radio. This exciting volume not only provides a survey of the best work being done in an emerging field, it also points to new ways of thinking about cultural history and media studies. Radio Reader is sure to become a classic work in the history of popular culture and mass media.

About the Author
Michele Hilmes is Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is the author of Hollywood in the Age of Television: From Radio to Cable and Radio Voices: American Broadcasting 1922-1952. Jason Loviglio is Assistant Professor of American Studies at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

Paul Apostolidis, Susan J. Douglas, John Fiske, Tona Hangen, Michele Hilmes, Michael C. Keith, Kate Lacey, Bruce Lenthall, Jason Loviglio, Michael P. McCauley, Tom McCourt, Allison McCracken, Jack Mitchell, Jason Mittell, Matthew Murray, Kathleen Newman, William F. O'Connor, Paul Riismandel, Eric Rothenbuhler, Alexander Russo, Barbara Savage, Judith E. Smith, Susan Smulyan, Derek Vaillant, Jennifer Hyland Wang