For decades now, one or two at a time, I have been collecting books about radio, my medium-of-first-love. In 2018, I began to more intentionally keep an eye out for volumes about imaginative audio production, theater of the mind, and the history and impact of sound-based news and entertainment. Below: what I’ve gathered so far.
Barber, Red. The Broadcasters . New York: The Dial Press, 1970.
Biewen, John, and Alexa Dilworth (Editors). Reality Radio: Telling True Stories in Sound . Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017.
Birkby, Robert. KMA Radio: The First Sixty Years . Shenandoah, Iowa: May Broadcasting Company, 1985.
Bogosian, Eric. Talk Radio . New York: Vintage Books, 1988.
Charnley, Mitchell V. News By Radio . New York: The MacMillan Company, 1948.
Chester, Giraud, and Garnet R. Garrison and Edgar E. Willis. Television and Radio (Third Edition) . New York: Meredith Publishing Company, 1963.
Coleman, Wim and Pat Perrin. The Age of Broadcasting: Radio . Carlisle, Massachusetts: Discovery Enterprises, 1997.
Collins, Philip. Radios: The Golden Age . New York: Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, 1987.
Crews, Albert. Radio Production Directing . Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1944.
Doolittle, John. Don McNeill and His Breakfast Club . Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001.
Ewbank, Henry L., and Sherman P. Lawton. Broadcasting: Radio and Television . New York: Harper & Brothers, 1952.
Field, Charles Kellogg. Cheerio’s Book of Days . New York: Garden City Publishing Company, 1940.
Fitzhugh, Bill. Highway 61 Resurfaced . New York: William Morrow, 2005.
Fitzhugh, Bill. Radio Activity . New York: William Morrow, 2004.
Flaherty, John J. Behind the Microphone . New York: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1944.
Fong-Torres, Ben. The Hits Just Keep on Coming . San Francisco: Miller-Freeman Books, 1998.
Fornatale, Peter, and Joshua E. Mills. Radio in the Television Age . New York: The Overlook Press, 1980.
Gabler, Neal. Winchell: Gossip, Power and the Culture of Celebrity . New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995.
Garner, Joe. We Interrupt This Broadcast . Naperville, Illinois: Sourcebooks, Inc., 1998.
Gifford, F. Tape: A Radio News Handbook (Third Edition) . Englewood, Colorado: Morton Publishing Company, 1987.
Gray, Barry. My Night People . New York: Simon and Schuster, 1975.
Heil, Alan L. Voice of America: A History . New York: Columbia University Press, 2003.
Henderson, Amy. On The Air: Pioneers of American Broadcasting . Washington City: Smithsonian Institution Press for the National Portrait Gallery, 1988.
Herr, Michael. Walter Winchell: A Novel . New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990.
Hoffer, Jay. Radio Production Techniques . Blue Ridge Summit, Pennsylvania: Tab Books, 1974.
Keiller, Garrison. WLT: A Radio Romance . New York: Viking Penguin, 1991.
Krieg, Joyce. Riding Gain: A Talk Radio Mystery . New York: Thomas Dunne Books, St, Martin’s Minotaur, 2005.
Lujack, Larry, and Daniel A. Jadlicka. Super Jock . Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1975.
Mitchell, Curtis. Cavalcade of Broadcasting . Chicago: Follett Publishing Company, 1970.
Morrow, Cousin Brucie, and Laura Baudo. Cousin Brucie: My Life in Rock ’n’ Roll Radio . New York: Beech Tree Books / William Morrow, 1987.
Nachman, Gerald. Raised on Radio . New York: Pantheon, 1998.
Neer, Richard. FM: The Rise and Fall of Rock Radio . New York: Villard, 2001.
Paley, William S. As It Happened: A Memoir . Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, 1979.
Passman, Arnold. The Deejays . New York: The Macmillan Company, 1971.
Peck, William A. Radio Promotion Handbook . Blue Ridge Summit, Pennsylvania: Tab Books, 1968.
Rehm, Diane. On My Own . New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2016.
Rubery, Matthew. The Untold Story of the Talking Book . Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2016.
Schneider, John F., in association with the California Historical Radio Society and its Bay Area Radio Museum. Images of America: Bay Area Radio . Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2012.
The Man at the Microphone. Washington Broadcast . Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Doran and Company, 1944.
Vowell, Sarah. Radio On . New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1996.
Woodfin, Jane. Of Mikes and Men . New York; McGraw-Hill, 1951.
That’s quite a list. Wow. :
And still looking for more, Michael — though buying used books over time, so as to keep the expense reasonable. So far, I’ve enjoyed reading them all.