Radio Books

The book is really an excellent reference in RF propagation models. The book covers all of the basics of RF propagation and environmental noise and in a well written and organized way. I like the book and I strongly recommend it for those who work in this field or interested in it.

This book covers all of the essentials of radiowave propagation and environmental noise and in a good level of detail. I have numerous other books on the subject and, while others may outshine it on individual topics, it offers even, well thought-out coverage of all the essential topics within radiowave propagation for Land Mobile radio. It is a must for those who design Land Mobile Radio networks.

The book is really a very good reference in RF propagation models. Also, topics like diversity, fading, sounding techniques, multiple inteference issues are thouroughly presented. I strongly recommend it to all of the GSM, PCS, and CDMA network designers. Diffraction is very well explained and there should be no problem applying it in the real world after reading this book.

Dennis Hart's book is a wonderful look at an important and unfairly forgotten broadcasting innovation: NBC's MONITOR. One of Pat Weaver's great creations - along with TODAY & TONIGHT - the show pretty much invented the NPR model of broadcasting (specifically, ALL THINGS CONSIDERED). MONITOR provided NBC Radio, the nation's first and classiest radio network, a dignified and well-loved response to the triumph of television and the sad last days of network radio. MONITOR lives on in this gallant and fun-to-read book!

Take 2 is indeed the expanded, inside story of Monitor. I was a newscaster on Monitor during its final years, working with many of the communicators who provide their own memories of this great radio service. Dennis Hart does a marvelous job of providing word pictures of the dedicated staff behind the scenes, besides the on-air people who kept Monitor on the air for almost 20 years

As the subtitle indicates, Dennis Hart has revised and expanded his history of Monitor, the weekend radio program that ran on the NBC radio network for nearly twenty years, delighting millions of listeners.

Why a revision? Because after his first edition chronicled the venerable show's history, many old Monitor hands contacted him to share their experiences in helping produce Monitor. The result is a fuller, richer picture that lets Monitor fans feel like they are looking over the shoulders of these lucky broadcast professionals as they created hours upon hours of live radio programming in the '50s through the mid '70s--a time when radio meant something far beyond today's homogenized, plasticized, excruciatingly boring programming.

For Monitor was a revolution in its day. When it was developed by the great Pat Weaver, then NBC President, long form radio programming (i.e.; fifteen and thirty minute shows) was almost extinct, television having siphoned off the audience.

Weaver created Monitor, a magazine of the air that ran on weekends and saved the NBC radio network from extinction. Monitor combined news, music, interviews, features, sports, comedy, and live remotes to bring listeners an ever changing and totally entertaining format that engaged listeners in what was going on in the world around them.

To top it all off, it was hosted by a pantheon of broadcast legends like Dave Garroway, Gene Rayburn, Hugh Downs, Mel Allen, Bill Cullen, Henry Morgan, Frank Blair, Ed McMahon, and many others each of whom gave the show its distinctive flavor.

Monitor was a big idea that sounded big and it resulted in what became practically a national institution over its twenty year run. Many fans, including this author, still miss it to this day.

Frankly, it's a puzzle why Monitor isn't still running today, since radio sure could use the intelligent, dynamic programming that typified a Monitor weekend.

Maybe it's too much to think that Monitor could return to the radio waves today, but I'd wager that after readers finish Hart's affectionate history, they'll wish it were so.

Dennis Hart did a thorough job of researching the program. He provides an overview of radio broadcasting in general as well as the nitty gritty of Monitor over almost two decades.

When former NBC president, Sylvester "Pat" Weaver died on March 15, 2002, his old network broadcast an obituary highlighting his programming innovations. Weaver brought us both "Today" and "Tonight," television shows that have lasted 50 years. Pat Weaver was a programming genius. Unfortunately, NBC Television failed to mention his major NBC Radio achievement: "Monitor." It revolutionized the network radio business 50 years ago; but, unfortunately, it died from neglect and the bottom line 30 years ago.
Monitor aired every weekend for 20 years. The first few years, it was broadcast 40 hours a weekend; later it was cut back to 16 and then to 12. But, in the beginning, if you were on the Monitor Beacon, you were one of 30 million listeners going places and doing things each weekend. You were hearing Dave Garroway, Henry Morgan, David Brinkley, Mel Allen, Joe Garagiola, Hugh Downs, Ted Brown, Gene Rayburn, Brad Crandall and many more. Bob and Ray were at Radio Central most of the weekend. Nichols and May were there too, as was Jonathan Winters. Weekends were different and so was Monitor.
So, why am I writing about Monitor 30 years later? Well, I was quite a devotee of Monitor. I listened every weekend. A year ago, it was a weekend, I was looking up a site on a search engine and, on a whim, I typed in "Monitor" to see what I'd find. To my surprise, I found an elaborate Web Site devoted entirely to Monitor with history, audio, pictures, reminiscences: ... Until then, I thought I was the biggest Monitor aficionado in the country. No, Dennis Hart is truly Mr. Monitor. This site was his brainchild. But he has more material than could ever fit on a Web site. Hence, the book.
This is a great book, easy to read and well-documented. Dennis actually interviewed Mr. Weaver. Mr. Weaver's comments demonstrate how much he thought of Monitor and how disappointed he was to see it end and why it did. Dennis also has interviewed other Monitor personnel, both on-the-air and behind the scenes. The book's packed with inside information.
When you go to the Web site, read the comments in the guestbook. See how many messages express hope that Monitor will return. I hope it will too. But until then, we have Monitor, the Book, and Monitor, the Web site, thanks to Dennis.

Dennis Hart has done a great public service with his history of "the last great radio show".

That show was Monitor on NBC radio, a program that not only ran every weekend for nearly twenty years, but in doing so, saved the NBC radio network from early extinction at a time when television was robbing network radio of its audience.

So what was Monitor? The brainchild of the late, great Pat Weaver, Monitor was a true magazine of the air--an intelligent, lively, exciting mixture of news, comedy, music, sports, interviews, and live remotes from around the world, all packaged into an ever changing format hosted by radio greats like Gene Rayburn, Dave Garroway, Henry Morgan, Bill Cullen, and many others. There was simply nothing else like it when it began in 1955. And really nothing else like it when it fell victim to the changing times and was finally cancelled in January 1975.

Hart deftly chronicles Monitor's creation, and breathes life into the story of its long run--longer than any other radio program. From the famous hosts, to the intense work it took for the show's producers and writers to actually create on a weekly basis, hours of live programming at a time when broadcasting technology was primitive by today's standards, to the Monitor Beacon itself, Hart reminds Monitor's fans why they spent so many of their weekend hours listening to the program.

I was a fan for years in the '60s and early '70s, but you don't have to remember the show to appreciate this affectionate history. And given the state of commercial radio today, you may come away wondering why Monitor is still not running every weekend "going places and doing things" and once again delighting millions of listeners.

This book is the best book I have ever seen on monster trucks. The pictures are amazing, the other content is really good as well, and the book is just over all great. My son LOVES this book.

I have been reading this book with my son, age 4, for a week. The book is not too long and it has really great photos in it. There are plenty of small snippets of information for reading so you can read a little on each page out loud without having to read it all. We checked it out from the library and I can't believe it is here in hardcover for five bucks. Truly worth the money.

I really liked this book. It told me all I really needed to know about Monster Jam and the Monster Trucks that raced in the rally's. The pictures really had action like the real thing. And you can trust me I've been in six of these events straight. It has eleven interviews of the Monster Trucks. It's like you are behind the wheel and you know exacly what your doing. From the kill switch to the gears you learn everything. The trucks 1,500 horsepower engines.

Everyone thinks of the Lone Ranger when they hear the William Tell Overture, but that long-running radio show used lots of other classical music, and other music including some from a 1938 movie serial about the masked man, during its long run and eventual move to television. Now readers can find out what all that music was, its sources, and how it wound up in a western adventure show. The author has done yeoman research in recreating this history of a radio classic.

This book is a quite pleasant surprise. It's written in a folksy, conversational style, befitting its less-than-earthshaking subject. However, Jones' research into the origins of the Lone Ranger Mood Music Library seems of consistently high caliber. His encyclopedic knowledge of the romantic composers rivals that of the dedicated staff that assembled this wonderful conglomeration of memorable themes which introduced so many young people (including me) to the magical world of classical music.

An added bonus is the insider's view of the epic 1940's battle between ASCAP and BMI. That struggle nearly deprived us of a large part of America's musical heritage. The current controversy over unauthorized music downloads seems trivial by comparison.

Reginald Jones has done scholarship a real service by uncovering the most minute details of the economic and physical circumstances behind the production of the haunting background music for "The Lone Ranger" radio and television series. This thoroughly researched book should be known by historians, film critics, literary theorists, and anyone who has ever wondered not only what that music was but why it sounded the way it did. A landmark wedding of devotion to a cause with meticulous archival study.

Born: 26 March 1904, Died: 31 October 1987, he was raised Catholic but had a fascination with Native American myths at a young age. He is well know for several books and "The Hero with a Thousand Faces" and different lecture series.

The Myths and the Masks of God include:

Interpreting Symbolic Forms
Using the Garden of Eden and the symbols including the two trees and a few beings, they are compared to earlier versions from societies 7000 BCE through 1900 CE. Concluding with "feel free to read any form you like into these symbols and realize it will be a symptom of you."

Mythic Vision

Experiencing the Devine

History of the Gods

The Religious Impulse

This series of lectures was given in the seventies and it is interesting to see how it holds up today. He brings a different vision for most of us when he compares a religion where we identify with God vs. having a relationship to God. Of course those that have followed Joseph Campbell Already have the concepts but find it useful to hear his thoughts and compare them to what we already know.

The nice thing about the lectures is that every time we hear them we get a different slant on what we originally heard or glossed over. Learn more www.jcf.org

The subject of the question of if Joseph Campbell's attitude towards the christian tradition suffers from a certain sort of prejudice is a somewhat complicated subject in Campbell's body of work. As another reviewer has noted, Campbell's criticism of christianity is of its emphasis of facts... as a pose to the poetry... But I think Campbell himself would acknowledge ..or its a part of Jung's work.. who Campbell follows... that an emphasis of subject over object, or object over subject.. has more to do with psychology typology then truth.. That is God is about transcending the idea of God... Which is to say.. you can sort of argue that Campbell is right in his criticism and Christianity is right for talking about its valuing of a factual grounding as being one of the virtues of the Christian tradition... What I'm saying is that this is a complicated subject.. and in some way I think we have to try and understand Campbell's position in a historical perspective and what it meant in relationship to that historical perspective.. And anyway.. one can come to one's own positions on these sorts of things

Further.. this stuff is a little complicated for anyone who hasn't spent some time with Campbell... but on the other hand.. one of the virtues of a book on tape is you can always listen to it more then once.. So I don't think the issue of the complexity of the material should be taken as a strike against it.. if anything.. I'd argue that it adds to the value.. because it gives you a reason to listen to it again and again.. to contemplate it.. etc..

The last thing to be said is that Campbell is at his best as a lecturer.. Sure, his books are great.. but there's a whole other dimension to the man that is really only to be captured in his lectures.. on tape.. and In my view.. this is the best way to take in Campbell..

In the editorial review printed below from some audio magazine, the reviewer accuses Campbell of having anti-Christian biases. If anything, Campbell cuts Christians too much slack in this series of lectures. Here Campbell explores the reasons for the decline of Christianity in our culture, and concludes that the problem lies in organized religions tradition of emphasizing the Christian mythology as historic fact. Campbell claims that this diminishes the effect of Christian symbolism, because when we discover scientific evidence that proves the mythology could not have been actual fact, we abandon the underlying truths the mythology was meant to illustrate. Campbell calls this a problem of reading poetry as prose, of reading metaphor as fact. This is the only thing in this series that could be remotely considered anti-Christian, and then only by a myopic pinhead. Anyone--Christian or otherwise--whose head wasn't firmly embedded in the nether regions of his or her anatomy would realize that this line of thought was liberating rather than negating.

Homemaking shows provided valuable information for those who lived on isolated farms, newsy gossip, and some scrumptious recipes. (Just look on eBay sometime and see how much the Kitchen Klatter cookbooks go for these days.) An extension of the broadcasts were the magazines published by these on-air homemakers, which arrived monthly at many a rural route mail box. I have an extensive collection of Kitchen Klatter and Jessie's Homemaker magazines (today a box of JH arrived with all the issues from 1949 - 1980) and can attest to the wonderful writing contained within these pages. These homemakers cared about their audience. They were a Dear Abby, a Heloise's household hints, a financial advisor, a party and club meeting planner (parties and clubs were extrememly important in those days before TV and email, and thrived as social outlets) and spiritual encouragement (churchgoing was no less valued.) Reading this book about these admirable ladies you will learn what a grueling schedule they endured, sometimes running a radio show out of their kitchen as their own family life went on about them, printing their magazines on presses run from their garage. These were ladies like their audience. They knew about hard work and hard times, and making do. And in between they shared news about their children, their vacations, their pets, what they made for supper the night before, and their current craft projects. Wonderful reading, written by an old KMA on air hostess herself. Worth preserving for posterity.

I sent for this unusual and interesting book after hearing its interesting and kind author in a radio interview. Not being a midwesterner I had never heard of Iowa station KMA or its "radio homemakers." The author informs us early on that the station "relied on talented and creative women" from the outset, in 1925. These Iowa women were radio journalists, home economists, and radio personalities - all in one. There were call-in shows. Their communities depended on them for weekly entertainment, information, humor, and continuity. These women and their shows, which had great longevity, were loved by their listeners, who considered them a part of their lives.

This book assembles recipes and life stories with equal ease. The careful stories are of the various women who had shows on the radio, the topics they explored on-air (mostly homey ones of interest to Iowa farm wives), and their effect on their listening community.

The photographs are poignant and wonderful. The recipes are mostly high-fat, high-calorie dishes that should probably be eaten in moderation. They are perfect for any one who longs for typical old-fashioned midwestern American food: meat and more meat, potatoes, hearty casseroles, vegetables cooked in old-fashioned ways, cheese balls and dips, cakes, pies, cookies, and candy. Some did not sound like anything one might like to try - "Chipped Dried Beef Deluxe," "Six-layer Washday Dinner" and (to this reader) improbable party foods such as "Crockpot Chili Dip." Some are downright disturbing to read, such as "Chipped Beef Chicken," which combines creamed cheese, chicken, bacon, and beef. Heart attack!

The main thing, though, is the size and the goodness of the personalities profiled here, along with the picture of a mostly vanished world. It's really not about replicating the food. A very worthwhile read about a group of interesting and truly nice people.

This was one of those 'recommended' books popping up under a cookbook I was ordering. I follow these threads because I've made some delightful finds that way. I'd never have known this book existed, had it not shown up under another book. I consider this the closest thing I can do to browsing in a 'real' store. Thank you, Amazon!

I occasionally come across a book covering something about which I know nothing. Other than hearing of Mary Margaret McBride's show during the Depression, I knew nothing of these local radio pioneers, sending news, advice and recipes to small towns and rural areas alike. Radio is still the most democratic of our media, accessible to anyone for pennies, and still a vital force in many third-world countries. We used to have radio that encompassed far more than just news and talk-radio; people expected more from the radio back then, and they got it.

The book is broken up into chapters covering the careers and recipes of women broadcasting from KMA radio in Iowa. There is no doubt that the part of a farm housewife could be lonely, and these radio programs would have provided good company. We have no true equivalent today; these broadcasters usually knew their audience personally, and vice versa. Into the sixties, these women broadcast their programs from their own homes, often from the kitchen, where they'd make recipes while giving them out over the air. Most of these women had an 'open door' policy where any listener coming through town could stop by their home and have refreshments without notice! Who would, or could, do that nowadays?

The recipes are excellent. I've made a dozen of them and all have worked well. My favorite so far is Jo Freed's carrot cake; unlike many, it's subtle with the spices and makes a large, juicy sheet cake.

Truly, though, it's the stories of the women working as 'radio homemakers' that makes the book. Most of these women were working because they had to, and mainstream broadcasting was still unheard of for women. Therefore, these women made successful careers appealing to women.

The author was herself a well-known broadcaster and brings personal knowledge of the other radio pioneers to add texture and substance to the book. It is beautifully written in a straightforward and informal style.

I appreciate the author documenting a small, but important, part of American history before all the radio homemakers are gone. Her book is valuable and engaging reading, even without the excellent recipes.

I can't remember where I first read a few excerpts from this book, but I remember being pretty irate I didn't have the full text in front of me at the time. Years later, after bad breakups, fires, towers falling down around me, I finally stumbled across Songs They Never Play On The Radio again, devoured it like a starved cannibal on the tundra. This book is so much wider in its scope than the blurbs on the back make it out to be, primarily in its oblique commentaries on European political history, and the valuation of Art.

The book is a biographical snippet of singer/songwriter Nico's last years and tours. At the beginning she is living in Manchester, England, addicted to heroin and passing her days getting high and drowsing in the shadows. A vaguely ambitious and obscure producer named Dr. Demetrius lines up a tour for her and pulls together a band to back her up. James Young, the author, is the keyboard player for this band.

The ensuing narrative is what they call in MFA programs "creative non-fiction." (Yes, MFA programs ARE annoying, but sometimes pull-out the useful term or two). Anyway, it reads like a novel, imitates actual events, and doesn't change the names like in a roman-a-clef. Fortunately, Young lets his camera jump cut from scene to scene, across time, countries and continents, to land right where the action demands. We get portraits of the band--Echo, a mixture of sullen, backsliding pater familia and post-punk rock bassist... oh, and throw in junkie to boot. We get a variety of drummers--from an industrial junk-percussion virtuoso to a totem-wearing pretty-boy tabla diva to a hair-metal sorta-be. We get a lead guitarist desperate to meet Bob Dylan. We get so many mini-music pros, the portrait of the desperation of professional pop music and the love of heroin might fool the reader into thinking it's the subject of the book.

But the real subject is the struggle for recognition and accomplishment of pop artist Nico, and what that means for all struggling artists, especially those who deal with all things truly dark. Nico just happens to write deeply shadowed, literary-style poetry for lyrics, whether she or anyone else likes it or not. The poems themselves, from You Forgot To Answer to Nibelungenland to Frozen Warnings to Mutterlein (to name a few), are not just personal blues songs (though some do deal with relationships). They are elegies for the German tragedy of World War II, and the tragic side of the long and rich history of the country in general. Throughout the book exists a painful irony where Nico responds to interviewers asking her about Berlin's pre- and post- war culture, by people who really don't care at all about the tragedy of racism and war and the hangover it left on the consciousness of a country and continent. Subtler still we get vestiges in the persona of Nico herself, of these old, Central-European cultural mores (and her own quandaries over its single-mindedness). We also get Nico's passing comments on Hassidic Jews and gypsies and thoughts that members the Velvet Underground were hostile due to her Germanness (though the author ascribes it to the possibility of being upstaged).

James Young handles his insights with a tenderness I rarely witness when it comes to themes of prejudice, loss and cultural kinetics. Throughout the band's world travels, the reader gets the sense that stereotypes like American battle-cry egotism, Pacific rim commercialism, Eastern European old-style communism are animals born from group mentality, group forces much more easily decried than deleted. No character or ideology is oversimplified here. I am reminded of an old episode of Maury Povich where he tries to get a neo-nazi to get over his prejudice and shake his hand. Not a bad thing, but come on, let's talk about why so many rural American kids are entranced by that crap in the first place. Instead, Mr. Young addresses the depression, the lack of options and the insanity of the materially and emotionally impoverished.

Personal emptiness, economic emptiness and artistic emptiness run parallel throughout the narrative. There is a scene where a female Japanese fan offers John Cale a rare bottle of sake as a gift. Well, by then it's later in the 1980's, Cale has gone from beer swilling, snow snorting studio genius to clean living performing genius. He turns her down. Young gives what's due with Cale, always underscoring his musical talent. But he also uses him as a somewhat abstracted symbol for a cultural shift in the music business (and perhaps international business in general). In the narrative, his figure symbolizes 1960's psychedelic, imagination-oriented, hedonism-rich art product, where one must at least pretend the artwork comes first and commerciality second, that then shifts to the mall-shopping fine threads wearing 1980's rich intellectual for whom the cash is not shameful in the least. (Ironically, with the advent of YouTube and so many free venues for every variety of artistic output, we may be entering a strange amalgam of the two eras--the complete shamelessness of wanting to make money with art, but such an abundance of supply that nobody cares to pay for it).

In the center stands Nico, her art and her lament (addiction is a by-product). No one really buys or plays her songs. The penny-pinching carnival goes on. At one point, late in the book, after enduring many painful episodes and adventures, Allen Ginsburg appears as a not-quite Deus ex Machina. Young and Nico accompany him to a poetry reading in Manchester. He heroically recites detailed images of gay sex to a horrified conservative crowd. It is one of the story's happier occasions. Nico seems in good spirits. We get the sense that any latent cultural cruelties on anybody's part were being rubbed out by a non-contrived shared interest in poetry and music. It recalls a time when both artists were looking forward with their art and perhaps hoping, consciously or not, to use it as building block for the improvement of late Twentieth-Century culture and life. At the end of the chapter, however, Nico ominously comments that Ginsburg did not take off his clothes as he used to...

...so I've listed some scenes in this review, but have not revealed even 1% of the beauty of this book. Buy and read it. If it is a gravemarker of a bygone era, I hope its stone fist points to a coming love of insight and imagination in humanity's cultural and artistic output. It rescues Nico's true beauty and function, an imperfect elegy writer, a singer for her native culture's, as well as pop culture's, death dirge and chance at rebirth. And to the dude who commented on another review here on Amazon.com and claimed Young is "milking" Nico's memory for even more money: Dude, whose clean cash pays your bills?

This book is a masterpiece of both style and content, and one of the very best rock biographies in existence. It explores the life of Nico after the Velvet Underground, covering her life in London and tours in Europe and the USA.

I found myself devouring the text in utter fascination. It includes descriptions of bizarre performances, wild parties, weird tour experiences, eccentric characters like her one-time manager Dr Demetrius, encounters with luminaries like John Cale, a visit to the motel where Tom Waits used to stay and much much more.

One of the funniest parts is the narrative of Nico's first experience with angel dust in Los Angeles. Underneath the humor there is a lot of sadness too but it is a strangely inspiring read. Songs They Never Play On The Radio certainly transcends the genre of rock writing. You don't have to be a fan of Velvet Underground to enjoy this classic work, as it stands on its own feet.

I became aware of this book through Young's appearance in the "Nico Icon" documentary. The book is well-written, dry and dark but not without compassion.

Anyone who is open minded enough to appreciate Spoken Word art really should take notice of this guy. He's WAY out there, and I think we all need to get WAY out there every now and then. I first heard this on CD when it came out. I listened to the whole thing and it just pulled me in. I'd never heard anything like it before in spoken word or elsewhere. It was closer I think to poetry than to stories. In each track, Mr. Codrescu paints a picture for the listener to digest and interpret. Most of the tracks have a serious message, but I like the way he uses sarcam, cynicism and humor to get the point across. Some of my favorite tracks are the one about Burger King, also the track where he has a conversation with his son about drugs, and the one about being a bored kid in the gymnasium school in Romania. Actually they're all really good. ...

His bit about VAMPIRES is NOT TO BE MISSED!!

Anyone who is open minded enough to appreciate Spoken Word art really should take notice of this guy. He's WAY out there, and I think we all need to get WAY out there every now and then. I first heard this on CD when it came out. I listened to the whole thing and it just pulled me in. I'd never heard anything like it before in spoken word or elsewhere. It was closer I think to poetry than to stories. In each track, Mr. Codrescu paints a picture for the listener to digest and interpret. Most of the tracks have a serious message, but I like the way he uses sarcam, cynicism and humor to get the point across. Some of my favorite tracks are the one about Burger King, also the track where he has a conversation with his son about drugs, and the one about being a bored kid in the gymnasium school in Romania. Actually they're all really good. Anyhow, the reason I checked in here is because somewhere in my last move I lost the CD and I'm finally getting around to replacing it. Unfortunately it looks as though it isn't available as CD anymore. Oh well. I'll have to settle for a tape. It's better than not having it in my collection at all. polishbeer@aol.com

This was indeed a drama in real life. The sound effects again make the difference in listening to this fine narrative. After listening and understanding Commander Preble's leadership challenges, you come away (after listening to it and to "Old Ironsides: Escape to the Winds" previously)feeling that the Consitution was commanded by a lot of really able leaders and the crew was certainly professional and dedicated. The challenges they faced in this time period must have seemed overwhelming and that is brought to life in this narrative. Add to the collection of excellent tapes by Jerry Robbins.

Wooden ships and iron men are the subject of this very enjoyable tape. I really got into the radio drama format. From what I read on the package, this story is true, almost too exciting to believe that it actually happened that way.

You really should listen to it. Its a great tape. Jerry Robbins does a great job as Captain Preble. Its fun, has battles, and is really exciting. I learned something that I did not know about the Constitution.