Broadcast Hysteria
Orson Welle's War of the Worlds and the Art of Fake News
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Narrated by:
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Sean Runnette
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By:
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A. Brad Schwartz
About this listen
In Broadcast Hysteria, A. Brad Schwartz examines the history behind the infamous radio play. Did it really spawn a wave of mass hysteria? Schwartz is the first to examine the hundreds of letters sent directly to Orson Welles after the broadcast. He draws upon them, and hundreds more sent to the FCC, to recapture the roiling emotions of a bygone era, and his findings challenge conventional wisdom. Relatively few listeners believed an actual attack was underway. But even so, Schwartz shows that Welles's broadcast prompted a different kind of "mass panic" as Americans debated the bewitching power of the radio and the country's vulnerabilities in a time of crisis.
Schwartz's original research, gifted storytelling, and thoughtful analysis make Broadcast Hysteria a groundbreaking work of media history.
©2015 A. Brad Schwartz (P)2015 HighBridge, a division of Recorded BooksListeners also enjoyed...
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Overall
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Performance
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- Unabridged
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Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Fifties is a sweeping social, political, economic, and cultural history of the 10 years that Halberstam regards as seminal in determining what our nation is today. Halberstam offers portraits of not only the titans of the age: Eisenhower, Dulles, Oppenheimer, MacArthur, Hoover, and Nixon; but also of Harley Earl, who put fins on cars; Dick and Mac McDonald and Ray Kroc, who mass-produced the American hamburger; Kemmons Wilson, who placed his Holiday Inns along the nation's roadsides; and more.
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Overall
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- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 9 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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In May 1987, Colorado Senator Gary Hart seemed a lock for the party’s presidential nomination and led George H. W. Bush by double digits in the polls. Then, in one tumultuous week, rumors of marital infidelity and a newspaper’s stakeout of Hart’s home resulted in a media frenzy the likes of which had never been seen. Through the spellbindingly reported story of the senator’s fall from grace, Matt Bai, Yahoo News columnist and former chief political correspondent for The New York Times Magazine, reveals the Hart affair to be far more than one man’s tragedy.
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Excellent writing and performance
- By S. on 12-06-14
By: Matt Bai
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The Walrus and the Elephants
- John Lennon’s Years of Revolution
- By: James A. Mitchell
- Narrated by: Stephen Hoye
- Length: 6 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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In late 1971 John Lennon left London behind and moved to New York, eager to join a youth movement rallying for social justice and an end to the Vietnam War. Lennon was quickly embraced by radicals and revolutionaries, the hippies and Yippies at odds with the establishment. Settling in Greenwich Village, the heart of Manhattan's counterculture, the former Beatle was soon on the frontlines of the antiwar movement and championing a range of causes and issues.
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I wish you were still here
- By Kazuhiko on 12-09-13
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Good Day!
- The Paul Harvey Story
- By: Paul J. Batura
- Narrated by: Paul J. Batura
- Length: 6 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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In Good Day!: The Paul Harvey Story, author Paul J. Batura follows the remarkable life of one of the founding fathers of the news media. Paul Harvey started his career during the Great Depression and narrated America's story day by day, through wars and peace, the threat of communism and the crumbling of old colonial powers, consumer booms and eventual busts.
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Should have been better
- By Royce Brown on 12-21-09
By: Paul J. Batura
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Pictures at a Revolution
- Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood
- By: Mark Harris
- Narrated by: Lloyd James
- Length: 17 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Here is the epic human drama behind the making of the five movies nominated for Best Picture in 1967 - Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, The Graduate, In the Heat of the Night, Doctor Dolittle, and Bonnie and Clyde - and through them, the larger story of the cultural revolution that transformed Hollywood and America forever.
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Would It Be Too Much To Ask?
- By Casey Keller on 12-31-08
By: Mark Harris
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Going Clear
- Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief
- By: Lawrence Wright
- Narrated by: Morton Sellers
- Length: 17 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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A clear-sighted revelation, a deep penetration into the world of Scientology by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Looming Tower, the now-classic study of al-Qaeda’s 9/11 attack. Based on more than two hundred personal interviews with current and former Scientologists—both famous and less well known—and years of archival research, Lawrence Wright uses his extraordinary investigative ability to uncover for us the inner workings of the Church of Scientology.
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Shockingly Great
- By Michael on 01-27-13
By: Lawrence Wright
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The Greatest Story Ever Sold
- The Decline and Fall of Truth from 9/11 to Katrina
- By: Frank Rich
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 9 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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When America was attacked on 9/11, its citizens almost unanimously rallied behind its new, untested president as he went to war. What they didn't know at the time was that the Bush administration's highest priority was not to vanquish Al Qaeda, but to consolidate its own power at any cost. It was a mission that could be accomplished only by a propaganda presidency in which reality was steadily replaced by a scenario of the White House's own invention.
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Listen to the facts, forgive the edge
- By Steven on 11-23-06
By: Frank Rich
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The Ten-Cent Plague
- The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America
- By: David Hajdu
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 11 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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In the years between World War II and the emergence of television as a mass medium, American popular culture as we know it was first created in the bold, pulpy pages of comic books. The Ten-Cent Plague explores this cultural emergence and its fierce backlash while challenging common notions of the divide between "high" and "low" art.
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Very frightening
- By Paul on 09-24-08
By: David Hajdu
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The Man Without a Face
- The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin
- By: Masha Gessen
- Narrated by: Masha Gessen
- Length: 10 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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The Man Without a Face is the chilling account of how a low-level, small-minded KGB operative ascended to the Russian presidency and, in an astonishingly short time, destroyed years of progress and made his country once more a threat to its own people and to the world.
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A Preview of Authoritarianism in the USA
- By Jimmy O on 06-08-19
By: Masha Gessen
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The Exception to the Rulers
- Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media that Love Them
- By: Amy Goodman, David Goodman
- Narrated by: Amy Goodman
- Length: 10 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Exception to the Rulers, award-winning journalists Amy and David Goodman expose the lies, corruption, and crimes of the power elite, an elite bolstered by large media conglomerates. Her goal is “to go where the silence is, to give voice to the silenced majority.” This audiobook includes numerous archival audio excerpts, including statements from filmmaker Michael Moore, civil liberties victims describing their harrowing ordeals in the United States after 9/11, and more.
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lacks balance
- By Amazon Customer on 04-19-23
By: Amy Goodman, and others
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The Image, 50th Anniversary Edition
- A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America
- By: Daniel J. Boorstin, Douglas Rushkoff - afterword
- Narrated by: Timothy Danko
- Length: 10 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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First published in 1962, this wonderfully provocative book introduced the notion of "pseudo-events" - events such as press conferences and presidential debates, which are manufactured solely in order to be reported - and the contemporary definition of celebrity as "a person who is known for his well-knownness". Since then Daniel J. Boorstin's prophetic vision of an America inundated by its own illusions has become an essential resource for any listeners who wants to distinguish the manifold deceptions of our culture from its few enduring truths.
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Boorstin’s deep Conservative mindset reaches through every example in this book.
- By Christine on 10-12-20
By: Daniel J. Boorstin, and others
What listeners say about Broadcast Hysteria
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- D. Frrazier
- 03-23-22
A very interesting book. Better than expected.
I was pleasantly surprised by how interesting this book was. At first I wondered how do you make 10-hour book out of an event that only lasted 1/10th of that time? The answer is that this book is not just about the War of the Worlds broadcast, though it is largely about this.
It is also a lot about the state of radio broadcasting in 1938. And it weaves in quite a bit of biographical detail about Orson Wells. There is also quite a bit about the so-called "panic" associated with the broadcast. To what extent was this panic real? Who was most susceptible to being frightened, and why? The book also looks at how the broadcast changed radio in the following years.
The book feels very relevant in our modern age when fake news is constantly bombarding us, especially online. I can see this book being required reading in a college-level media studies class. If I was a student in such a class, this would probably be one of my favorite books on the reading list.
I noticed one review of this book that claimed it is overly repetitive. I would have never come up with that claim, but I guess I can see how some readers might feel that way. The book returns again and again to certain themes as it looks at the broadcast from different angles: The audience for the broadcast was small. The number of people who were frightened was smaller still. The number who truly panicked was probably tiny. Almost anyone could have been frightened by the broadcast, given the right circumstances, like tuning in late, or hearing about the broadcast from another frightened person.
Overall, a very interesting and educational read. Highly recommended, especially if you already have an interest in the topic.
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Overall
- Lizz
- 05-14-15
Kinda interesting but incredibly repetitive
It reads like a work that started out as different articles by different authors and then got pieced together to make a book. It's an interesting read but needlessly long. So many points are made over & over again. I just feel like the editor was out of red ink that day and just said screw it.
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3 people found this helpful