Raised on radio

In the late 1920s radio exploded almost overnight into being America's dominant entertainment, just as television would do twenty-five years later. Gerald Nachman, himself a product of the radio years - as a boy he did his homework to the sound of Jack Benny and Our Miss Brooks - takes us back to the heyday of radio, bringing to life the great performers and shows, as well as the not-so-great and not-great-at-all.

Nachman analyzes the many genres that radio deployed or invented, from the soap opera to the sitcom to the quiz show, zooming in to study closely key performers like Benny, Bob Hope, and Fred Allen, while pulling back to an overview that manages to be both comprehensive and seductively specific.