Long before the internet, another young technology was
transformed--with help from a colorful collection of eccentrics and
visionaries--into a mass medium with the power to connect millions
of people. When amateur enthusiasts began sending fuzzy signals
from their garages and rooftops, radio broadcasting was born.
Sensing the medium's potential, snake-oil salesmen and preachers
took to the air, at once setting early standards for radio
programming and making bedlam of the airwaves. Into the chaos
stepped a young secretary of commerce, Herbert Hoover, whose
passion for organization guided the technology's growth. When a
charismatic bandleader named Rudy Vallee created the first on-air
variety show and America elected its first true radio president,
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, radio had arrived.With clarity, humor,
and an eye for outsized characters forgotten by polite history,
Anthony Rudel tells the story of the boisterous years when radio
took its place in the nation's living room and forever changed
American politics, journalism, and entertainment.
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