Thanks so much to NetGalley for the free kindle book! I knew as soon as I saw this book that I wanted to read it. I remember learning about it years ago but only short lessons on school. Never anything in depth. It is amazing how much worse it was than we were ever taught.

So many non-fiction books are so dry and packed with facts that you could use them as a sleep aid. Definitely not this one! I was hooked from the first page.

The cover-up after the fact was crazy, although not surprising. People died and were injured during the panic; in fact, one woman committed suicide rather than let the aliens get to her. I am not surprised that they covered up the details as best as they could, but that they somehow gaslight everyone in the country not to sue?

This is an amazing book! Definitely read it!!!

Thanks again to NetGalley for the free kindle book! My opinions are my own and are freely given.

Preserving A Clarion Call Against Attempts At Revisionist History. Radio, as Hazelgrove notes in the text here, was a new tech that had found its way rapidly into seemingly every home in America, no matter how remote, over the course of essentially a generation. As Hazelgrove notes, the first "real time" Presidential election returns were broadcast by radio just 18 years before the night Orson Welles issued his clarion call against the dangers of the media.

One idea Hazelgrove hits on early, often, and strongly, is that Welles' Halloween Eve 1938 broadcast of a teleplay version of H.G. Well's War Of The Worlds did not cause any mass panic, that this is some kind of revisionist misinformation itself. Hazelgrove goes to great detail in showing the widespread reports of just how wrong this claim is, of showing numerous media reports from the next day and the following weeks and years citing the exact people and their reactions, showing that this was indeed a widespread mass panic event. One that perhaps some did not fall for, but clearly many did.

This text overall is the entire history of that pivotal six seconds of dead air that night, of everything leading up to it - including a somewhat detailed biography of Welles himself - and of everything that came from it, all the way through the deaths and legacies of the primary people involved - again, specifically, Welles.

Its bibliography comes in at 14%, which is *just* close enough to the 15% or so I've been trying to relax my older 20-30% standard to to avoid a star deduction, but let me be clear - I do wish it had a larger bibliography. Still, given the esoteric nature of the subject and it being a singular event involving a handful of key players, perhaps there literally weren't more sources for this particular text to cite.

One thing that Hazelgrove makes a point of detailing throughout this text is that Welles in particular believed that this play was a clarion call against how easily the radio format could be used to manipulate large swaths of people, and that the fallout it caused proved his point - including the man who attempted to kill him in the early 40s as Welles walked into a diner, because that man's wife had committed suicide the night of the War of the Worlds broadcast due to believing it was completely real.

In that vein of Welles' call, let me point out that it is *still* happening *to this day*, and indeed specifically *on this day*. I write this review on November 5, 2024, the date of yet another US Presidential Election. This one in particular has featured a grievous manipulation by media, one not imaginable even as recently as 12 years ago. The LGBT community has been fighting for its rights and indeed its very right to *exist* legally for 55 years (dating from the Stonewall Riots, a common date used to denote the beginning of this push for rights). It was barely 21 years ago, with Texas v Lawrence, that the Supreme Court of the United States effectively legalized anal sex in the US. It was just 9 years ago, with Ogberfell v Hodges, that that same court ruled that same sex couples have the legal right to marry in the United States. With all of this *recent* history - much of it *within my own adult lifetime* - why is the media of 2024 ignoring the first married gay man running for President who is openly on the ballot for President in 47 States and a recognized write in candidate in the remaining 3 + DC? That man is Chase Oliver, and I can tell you why they are ignoring his historic candidacy: because he dared run under the "wrong" Party label, being the Libertarian Party's nominee. Were he instead the nominee of one of the "two" controlling Parties in the US, this very history would be a primary focal point of that same media over these last weeks.

As Welles proclaimed and showed 86 years ago, the media can and will manipulate you at will. Including, as Hazelgrove makes a point to show through this text, trying to gaslight you into believing history making events never happened to begin with. Another "Or" "Well" - George Orwell - warned us about this in another clarion call book written just a few years after Orson Welles' War of the Worlds event, in a book named 1984. But that is another review entirely. ;)

As it stands, this text is truly well written and truly a bulwark against attempts to revise the history of Welles' astounding avant-garde event.

Very much recommended.

My thanks to both NetGalley and Rowman & Littlefield Publishers for an advanced copy about a time in America when a man with dreams and the ability to match them, could scare a nation with a burgeoning new social media device, radio.

I have read a lot on Orson Welles and recently I have seen a lot of new books coming out about this fascinating self-made man whose ambitions got in the way of common sense, and well social niceties. Welles was a prodigy, quoting Shakespeare as a child, with a voice, a presence and a will to make himself successful, and create art that is still talked about today. However Welles always had a secret side, a side that made him unloyal in marriage, quick to anger at those who he felt failed him, and a bit of a trickster. Actually a lot of a trickster. The showmen, the story, the voice, the presence and the trickster combined with the talent of voice actors, conductors, and a producer willing to bar a studio with his body all came together one magical night for a radio show. And caused chaos the likes no one had seen. Dead Air: The Night That Orson Welles Terrified America writer and journalist William Elliott Hazelgrove is a look at the Halloween night, a simple tale of aliens that caused people to leave their homes, take up arms, break the law, and maybe even worse.

Orson Welles was born with a love of entertaining, a skill of memorization, a love of magic, and a want for all the attention to be on him. Welles called himself a changeling, a baby switched into his family who he thought dull, but in many ways he was like his skirt chasing alcoholic father, his distant mother, and even his troubled older brother. Welles wanted to lead, to be the lead, the focus, the person that all eyes focused on. Welles left America at 16 traveling to Ireland where he lied himself on stage. Returning to America Welles found many unimpressed by his European work, and coming to New York in the midst of the depression with a new wife, found himself struggling for work. An ability to like a baby got his foot in the door. A meeting with a producer found him a theater group. Being the voice of the Shadow made him a star. Soon Welles was working 18 hours days, with plays and radio shows. Needing product like today's streaming service the idea of adapting H. G. Welles (no relation) War of the Worlds came to mind. With a modern twist. A script was written, and on Halloween night 1938 Orson Welles raised his hands to conduct his greatest moment.

I have read, like I wrote a few books on Welles, but this is the most comprehensive study I have read about the entire War of the Worlds radio show I have read. Hazelgrove is a very good writer, covering radio history, Welles, the show's birth, the players that usually get ignored in the telling, and the aftermath, which was a lot larger than people wanted to admit. I love the way the story is told, from Welles allowing 6 seconds of dead air, a radio nightmare, to really punctuate to people that something odd was happening. This might have been the moment when doubt for many turned to fear. People hitting the roads, screaming the end was coming, smelling smoke hearing screams. Hazelgrove looks at this from a few points of view, the listeners, Welles, and the after effect. The fear that radio could be responsible for. The gullibility of people. And Welles role in this. Hazelgrove has done an amazing amount of research and it shows, but the book is written as almost a mystery, which I enjoyed.

A fascinating book for Welles fans, and one I enjoyed for it leaves a lot of questions. Was Welles just a bad little boy who happened on something, a story that made the news in a career defing way. Or was Welles the magician he always was, making a story that would get him out of radio and into the movies, where he longed to be, and which destroyed him. A fascinating book, especially for people who study social media, and why people believe the things they do.

While the War of the Worlds legend has expanded in the years since Orson Welles' famous broadcast, this is a sharp little book about a cultural juggernaut and his most foundational mythos.

I am DNFing this book at 27% but I would absolutely recommend it!

The first part of the book details the events of that one night Orson Welles' radio play caused chaos and confusion and I loved reading about it through different people's perspectives. Unfortunately, the next chapters are about Orson Welles' life and while I am sure that can be super interesting for people who want to learn about his background, I thought the book would be more specifically about the War of the Worlds event which is what I am personally interested in.

I think I will pick up this book as an audiobook once it is available as that is my preferred format for reading biographies and I will finish this book at a later date.


Thank you NetGalley and Rowman & Littlefield | Rowman & Littlefield Publishers for the opportunity to read this ARC.

I loved this book. The story of Orson Welles and the War of the Worlds radio performance is one of my favorites and as someone who studied media, I've read a lot about this experience. I think this book is great with showing the story and the man behind the broadcast. This story is one of the funniest things I've read and studied but it is also kind of scary because it is not far off from happening again. I think this book was good and if you are looking for a wild story that doesn't sound true but is, this is the book for you to learn about the War of the Worlds performance and why it is still studied and talked about to this day.