Radio History

Cold War Radio is a fascinating look at how the United States waged the Cold War through the international broadcasting of Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL). Mark G. Pomar takes listeners inside the two radio stations to show how the broadcasts were conceived and the impact they had on international broadcasting, United States-Soviet relations, Russian history, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

This is an abridged edition of Sanjeev Sanyal's Revolutionaries: The Other Story of How India Won Its Freedom, shortened and illustrated for younger readers. You may have read the history of India's freedom struggle from the perspective of the non-violent movement. Yet, the story of armed...

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British institution, and its story during the Second World War is also our story. This was a period of remarkable voices: Churchill’s speeches, de Gaulle’s broadcasts from exile, Richard Dimbleby and Vera Lynn. Radio offered an incomparable tool for propaganda while at the same time eyewitness testimonies gave a voice to everyone, securing the BBC’s reputation as a purveyor of truth.

Radio doesn't play a lot of those oldies anymore, even though you would enjoy hearing them again. This book tells you all about the lost or forgotten oldies, as well as history about the artists and their songs.

Veteran White House reporter April Ryan thought she had seen everything in her two decades as a White House correspondent. And then came the Trump administration. In Under Fire, Ryan takes us inside the confusion and chaos of the Trump White House to understand how she and other reporters adjusted to the new normal. She takes us inside the policy debates, the revolving door of personnel appointments, and what it is like when she, as a reporter asking difficult questions, finds herself in the spotlight, becoming part of the story.

In an era of fake news and new fault lines in global politics, millions of listeners turn to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme each morning to help them make sense of the world around them. The first ever book from the iconic programme marks 60 years of programming with 60 world-changing stories. Covering everything from the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Anti-Apartheid Movement to the emergence of Brit Art and space exploration, artificial intelligence and machine learning, Today explores events as they happened and reveals how they changed the world around us.

This is an inspiring memoir about a young woman who, abandoned by her father and then her mother, must become an adult at a very young age and deal with her teenage pregnancy.

Scripting Empire recovers the literary and cultural history of West Indian and West African writing at the BBC in order to rethink the critical mid-century decades of shrinking British sovereignty, late modernism, and mass migration to the metropole. Scripting Empire works comparatively across dozens of different programs spanning the General Overseas Service, Home Service, Light Program, and Third Program.

Did they really happen - those long ago days of the purple haze? Welcome to 60's from a front row seat. The rise of Freeform underground radio, and the legendary KPPC-FM. This 1960s memoir is a nostalgic chronical about peace, love, war, rock-n-roll, and everything that the underground radio represented during this revolutionary time in California's and America's history.

Information Please, the popular radio quiz program that played experts for fall guys, was capital, dependable, adult radio fun for more than a decade (1938-1952). The fast-cracking experts John Kieran, omniscient sports columnist for the New York Times; Franklin Pierce Adams, New York Post columnist; Oscar Levant, composer, pianist, gag-stacked Broadway farer were acknowledged by listeners as the most knowing of know-it-alls.

Join Rush Revere on another action-packed journey! Rush and his friends head back in time to the early days of our independent nation to watch the early American presidents George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson in action! Hey there, young readers! Rush Revere here. I can’t wait...

Turn Your Radio On tells the fascinating stories behind gospel music's most unforgettable songs, including "Amazing Grace," "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," "He Touched Me," "I'll Fly Away," "Were You There?" and many more. These are the songs that have shaped our faith and brought us joy...

Back in 1972, people had never heard of Samantha, Sven, nor Mrs. Trellis, and had no idea of the rules of Mornington Crescent, nor what points are for. The year 2022 marks 50 years of radio insanity—of the nation's finest comic minds being given silly things to do, with some of them set to music. Celebrate the Golden Anniversary of the greatest radio comedy of all time, the antidote to panel games, with the epic and exhaustive, fully authorized history of both I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again and its beloved spin-off, I'm Sorry, I Haven't a Clue.

In the Twist of the Dial addresses how economics, changing regulatory policies, and even retail trends have conspired over the last few decades to effect what listeners, especially in non-metropolitan markets are now hearing on their local radio stations. It reminds listeners that in the final analysis, as with so much else in the U.S., in radio, it’s all about sales, profit, and the bottom line. It is a must-listen for anyone who enjoys listening to radio, who wonders about how it all works, and what its future may be.

Freedom of speech. It is our most cherished privilege as Americans, guaranteed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution since 1791. But our current presidential administration threatens to sharply curtail or silence altogether the freedom of expression that distinguishes America from the...

While not dead, radio's familiarity has made it seem a bit mundane, but people shouldn’t think of it that way. In fact, the airwaves have always been a place of mystery, a battleground of competing ideologies, and a source of anonymous voices. Radio has been used to support war efforts, topple governments, communicate secretly, and even attempt to communicate with the dead. These strange stories will make this familiar medium seem a bit less familiar and far more interesting.

First broadcast in 1948, Sports Report is the longest-running radio sporting programme in the world and one of the BBC’s hardy perennials. Pat Murphy has been a reporter on the programme since 1981 and here he sifts comprehensively through the experiences of his contemporaries and those who made their mark on Sports Report in earlier decades. Drawing on unique access from the BBC Archives Unit, he highlights memorable moments from Sports Report.

Shortly after taking office in 1933, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered the first of his radio broadcasts to the American public. In simple, plain language, he took pains to explain the basic mechanics of the banking system, the causes of the present banking crisis, and the steps he was taking to stabilize the system. It was an extraordinary moment, the first time an American President had bypassed the traditional channels of communication (newspapers largely owned by conservative Republicans) and taken his message directly to the people.

And now, the Shipping Forecast issued by the Met Office… Often described as a litany, mantra or lullaby, the Shipping Forecast has long been a favourite of cosy homes on chilly evenings. Its practical use as a precise reading of the marine weather around the British Isles has been largely...

Former Secretary of State, and first generation American, Colin Powell explains the importance of remaining an open and welcoming nation for NPR's This I Believe series. This I Believe is a National Public Radio program that features Americans, from the famous to the unknown, completing the...