The Encyclopedia of American Radio: An A-Z Guide to Radio from Jack Benny to Howard Stern

By Ronald W. Lackmann

Book Overview

This work is a guide to American radio personalities, shows and sponsors. It features 1000 entries on major radio programmes, newsletters, vintage radio show clubs, organizations, dates and cast... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0816041377
• ISBN13: 9780816041374
• Release Date: January 1999
• Publisher: Facts on File
• Length: 370 Pages
• Weight: 3.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 11.3" x 1.3" x 8.8"

Customer Reviews

Here's an honest review

There's something highly suspicious about all the one-star reviews on this book. Sounds like somebody is out to promote their competing book if you ask me. Some of the "reviews" contain outright fibs: e.g., the entry on NBC's Monitor Show states very clearly it was a radio show that ran from 1955 to 1974, not a "TV show" as the reviewer alleges. I used to listen to radio as a kid, starting in the late 1940s. I looked up all my old favorites, and found the entries to be accurate and informative. The huge number of entries are necessarily short, but this book brought back memories! It's good place to start in getting into the history of old radio. Also contains 120 period photos.

A wonderful, concise reference book about old time radio

Ron Lackmann's Encyclopedia of American Radio is a great book to have in a library. The descriptions of the celebrated radio programs of the past and the hundreds of short biographies of many of the most popular radio actors of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, as well as those of several current radio performers, are informative and clearly and simply written. Most important, this is a fine reference book for anyone who wants to read about "old time" radio. The photographs in the book are really excellent and I have never seen most of them anywhere else before, in spite of the fact that I have read about old time radio extensively. This is a good book for young people who want to learn more about a radio show or a performer of the past they might have heard about in passing. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in entertainment of the past.

Great Job Ron Lackmann

This book, The Encyclopedia of American Radio, is an excellent, comprehensive compilation of facts and photos relating to radio shows and personalities of the past that were part of Radio's Golden Age...the thirties, forties and fifties. It is a very fond look back at those days when we all gathered around the family radio and listened to such great shows as The Lone Ranger, The Shadow, The Lux Radio Theater, Jack Benny, et al. The amount of information given in this book is vast and the Appendices, which lists hundreds of dramatic anthology shows and personalities not given separate entries in the book, is extensive. An amazing achievememnt and it is Fun to read and not dull, which is more than I can say for other less well written Radio Encyclopedias that have been published in the last few years. Congratulations, Mr. Lackmann, for a job well done.

A diversified book about Old Time radio

Ron Lackmann's Encyclopedia of American Radio is a wonderfuul and useful book about Old Time Radio. It is the only book I have found on the subject that gives both show descriptions and biographies of many major radio personalities. I have found other books that are filled with far many more errors than are found in this book, and yet those books seem to get favorable reviews from certain somewhat bitter people. I have been told that authors writing for vanity publishers often write favorable reviews for their own books on similar sujects and nasty picky criticisms of other people's books on similar subjects in order to undermine work done by others. How awful. I found the illustrations in Lackmann's Radio Encyclopedia especially nostalgic and very provocative of a time gone by. I understand the bvook won the POpular Culture award as Best Reference book for 1997...which was well deserved. The extensive APPendices is also most impressive.

An excellent, comprehensive reference.

Ron Lackmann's The Encyclopedia Of American Radio provides a dictionary of American radio history which includes synopses of hundreds of shows, broadcast histories and air times, and analyses of the influence of writing and network decision-making processes on radio content and distribution. An excellent reference.