Intelligent and informative . . . Schwartz has access to materials . . . that no one has thoroughly studied before, and they allow him a carefully nuanced view.” —Michael Wood, The New York Review of Books
“The night before Halloween, 1938, Welles and his staff perpetrated the most notorious hour of radio in the history of the medium . . . As A. Brad Schwartz shows . . . the audience was duped largely by the pacing . . . At the Welles archive at the University of Michigan, Schwartz studied more than a thousand letters related to The War of the Worlds . . . [He] concludes that rumors of all-out panic were fanned by print commentators who wished to ponder the gullibility of the masses and the unreliability of the radio medium—much as pundits fret over the Internet today.” —Alex Ross, The New Yorker
“A winning mixture of history, biography, media criticism, and statistical analysis . . . [Broadcast Hysteria] is rich with context and often dryly humorous detail.” —Jason Heller, NPR
“[A. Brad Schwartz's] well researched first book, which grew out of his honors thesis, challenges conventional wisdom. He also deftly places Welles's caper in the perspective of the time, when a real world war was looming, and the new medium of radio was enjoying a fleeting "Golden Age" as it simultaneously was experimenting with other dubious forms of journalism.” —David Holahan, The Christian Science Monitor
“[Broadcast Hysteria] offers up many fresh details and, along the way, shows the many ways in which the whole [War of the Worlds] episode reverberates in our own time.” —Richard J. Tofel, The Wall Street Journal
“An impeccable account of the most famous radio show in history, a fascinating biography of Orson Welles, and a vital lesson about the responsibility of the media.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Groundbreaking . . . Fascinating as an analysis of both pop-culture and the media.” —Booklist (starred review)
“Whether you're a cinephile or not, this is a book you'll be glad you read.” —James Crossley, Bookriot
“An entertaining assessment of a watershed moment in American life and its lasting effect on popular culture.” —Kirkus
“A gripping and informative look at the War of the World broadcast, as well as contemporary issues in the early 20th-century industry of radio.” —Robin Chin Roemer, Library Journal
“Schwartz is a talented writer, and Broadcast Hysteria does an effective job of reminding readers that radio's intimate power in the 1930s is almost unimaginable in today's multiplatform media environment . . . the most robust account yet of audience reaction both to the broadcast and to the ensuing newspaper reports of panic . . . Schwartz's research is impressive and his findings are important.” —Reason magazine
“This carefully researched new book reveals that the press, pundits, and academics got the story [of the broadcast] colossally wrong . . . . A. Brad Schwartz has evaluated more than a thousand letters written by Martian broadcast listeners to CBS, to the Federal Communications Commission, and to Welles himself. Schwartz is the first scholar to have read some of these letters . . . . [and] he comes to a startling conclusion: The hysteria was produced not by the audience, but by the press . . . . Schwartz is a graceful writer and a diligent historian.” —The Weekly Standard
“If you think you know the story of Orson Welles and his Martian-invasion radio show, you're wrong-and A. Brad Schwartz is the perfect writer to set you straight, in this thoroughly engaging, superbly researched work.” —Max Allan Collins, author of Road to Perdition and The War of the Worlds Murder
“Though the War of the Worlds broadcast has long been regarded as a singular event, it has lacked a historical study scaled to explore its many dimensions. A. Brad Schwartz has at last provided one. With a professional hand and an engaging style, Schwartz marshals unexplored archival evidence and synthesizes contentious debates to offer a fresh account of how the broadcast was conceived, experienced, aggrandized, and debunked, giving us fascinating portraits of everyone from Welles and his troupe to federal regulators, media researchers, and ordinary listeners. Capturing the sheer scope of the radio play and the thrill of its audience in an accessible way, this book will be an essential text for a long time to come.” —Neil Verma, author of Theater of the Mind: Imagination, Aesthetics, and American Radio Drama
“Beautifully mirroring the ideals that guided Orson Welles's Mercury Theatre, A. Brad Schwartz has taken a well-known story from the past and told it with stunning originality. He excavates a crucial element missing from most previous accounts: the real people who listened in on October 30, 1938, to the news of a Martian invasion. Long derided as naive and gullible, or dismissed as insignificant in number, they emerge here as self-effacing, fearful, outraged, funny, and courageous-in other words, a lot like people today. Welles would be proud.” —Mark Samels, executive producer, American Experience, PBS
“There was no mass panic on the night of October 30, 1938. Yet many still believe a radio drama featuring Martian invaders incited mobs of Americans to flee their homes. In Broadcast Hysteria, A. Brad Schwartz clarifies misconceptions and sets the record straight. In this well-written and meticulously researched work, Schwartz explains how a brilliant radio artist, an irresponsible press, and an overly ambitious social scientist combined to conjure one of the twentieth century's most enduring fables. The real story told here proves far more interesting than the myth.” —Michael Socolow, associate professor of communication and journalism, University of Maine
“In this analytic tour de force, A. Brad Schwartz has assessed upward of two thousand letters-most available to researchers only recently-expressing every manner of opinion regarding Orson Welles's 'panic broadcast.' The result surpasses in comprehensiveness and insight all previous studies of this notorious media event.” —Paul Heyer, author of The Medium and the Magician: Orson Welles, the Radio Years, 1934-1952
“A revealing and important reassessment of the most myth-encrusted radio program in American history.” —W. Joseph Campbell, author of Getting It Wrong: Ten of the Greatest Misreported Stories in American Journalism
★ 01/19/2015
In the days after the War of the Worlds national radio broadcast in October 1938, thousands of Americans sent angry letters to the FCC, CBS, Orson Welles, and his Mercury Theatre. This new study of War of the Worlds dutifully examines those complaint letters and reveals what really happened in America during that chaotic hour-long broadcast. Schwartz’s debut book sets the scene perfectly and dispels several myths about any “panic” over a Martian invasion in New Jersey. Schwartz gives proper credit to the supporting cast of actors, writers, and composers who made the radio program into an international sensation. He lays out a balanced case—recognizing that some Americans did consider War of the Worlds an actual news report and were deeply frightened by it, but that most treated it as a scary prank or a betrayal of the radio’s supposed objectivity. The book rightly emphasizes the enormous power mass media wields over the emotions and politics of the country. Welles’s Martian landing might not have fooled today’s listeners, but our vulnerability and our appetite for fake news persists. Schwartz’s book is an impeccable account of the most famous radio show in history, a fascinating biography of Orson Welles, and a vital lesson about the responsibility of the media. Agent: Ross Harris, Stuart Krichevsky Agency. (May)
If you think you know the story of Orson Welles and his Martian-invasion radio show, you're wrong-and A. Brad Schwartz is the perfect writer to set you straight, in this thoroughly engaging, superbly researched work.
★ 03/15/2015
Fake news takes a serious turn in this thoroughly researched work of nonfiction by first-time author Schwartz. The narrative tells the fascinating story of the history, development, reception, and aftermath of Welles's infamous radio broadcast, as performed by the Mercury Theater on October 30, 1938. A screenwriter by training, Schwartz deftly combines established research on the subject of the broadcast with a diverse selection of primary source materials, including a largely unexamined collection of surviving listener letters housed at the University of Michigan. The result is an engaging account and analysis that quickly draws readers into the early years of broadcast news and entertainment and asks them to take seriously the significance of War of the Worlds, not for its overhyped reputation for inducing hysteria, but for its landmark status in the histories of radio, information culture, and showmen such as Welles. VERDICT A gripping and informative look at the War of the World broadcast, as well as contemporary issues in the early 20th-century industry of radio. Highly recommended for students of journalism, fans of Welles, and general readers interested in radio or broadcasting.—Robin Chin Roemer, Univ. of Washington Lib., Seattle
2015-03-01
A skeptical look at the panic that might have been.Just as literature was created the day a boy cried wolf when there was no wolf, the birth of fake news in the United States may have been Oct. 30, 1938, when a rising young radio celebrity cried Martian when there was no Martian. His name, of course, was Orson Welles (1915-1985), and he unleashed a radio production that convinced a number of people that space invaders had arrived in tiny Grover's Mill, New Jersey, and were proceeding to burn a path of destruction along the East Coast that would shame Gen. Sherman. Listeners throughout the country fled their homes in terror—or did they? That's the question raised in this book by Schwartz, who persuasively argues that Martian hysteria was largely a media invention. Drawing on both ratings and hundreds of archived original letters from listeners (both pro and con) addressed to the FCC and CBS, Schwartz easily dismantles the idea that Welles alarmed the nation, as most people were tuned to another station. Among actual listeners, many knew the program was fiction, either because they heard it announced as such at the beginning or because they saw through it—and loved it. Relatively few people lost their grips on reality, but the press saw them as the majority and never bothered to check if they actually were. "No journalist ever made a serious attempt to figure out how much of the country had even heard the broadcast," writes the author, "much less how many in its audience were frightened." Myth became hardened into fact by a popular academic study, which Schwartz reveals was largely shaped to fit an unexamined hypothesis. The author credibly shows that the problem wasn't the fake broadcast but the fake interpretation—"a newspaper exaggeration born of haste and misunderstanding"—that chilled creative expression. Advertisers, fearful of offending audiences, wanted shows that pandered to the lowest common denominator. Welles' first great triumph also effectively killed the golden age of radio. An entertaining assessment of a watershed moment in American life and its lasting effect on popular culture.
