“In Radio’s America, Bruce Lenthall provides a perceptive and balanced overview of radio’s major contributions to American culture during its most vital years, years that were truly formative not only of American broadcasting but of our history as a nation as well. Lenthall encourages us to reevaluate what we think we know about the beginnings of mediated mass culture in the United States. His analysis, clearly written to appeal to a broad audience, refreshes old debates and sheds new light on unexplored figures and ideas.”

Michele Hilmes, University of Wisconsin–Madison

“This impressive and engaging book explores how broadcast radio was used and conceptualized by ordinary listeners, politicians, priests, doctors, dramatists, and intellectuals. Bruce Lenthall demonstrates great breadth of knowledge of the period as he synthesizes in a very readable fashion an enormous amount of material usually considered separately. This collage of unlikely elements fleshes out the rich and contradictory ways various sectors of the culture negotiated modern mass society by using radio to speak about their worlds.”

Lynn Spigel, Northwestern University

"Required reading for those who still believe that American radio, from its inception, encompassed only defenseless audiences and hegemonic broadcasters."

Michael J. Socolow | Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television

"...valuable for its clear and undistracted focus on important analytical questions raised by the rise of mass culture."

Lendol Calder | The Historian