Radio’s America by Bruce Lenthall, 2007

As radio developed and spread in Depression-era America, various groups began to notice and adjust. Public intellectuals and academics fretted over mass communication and mass culture. Demagogues (Charles Coughlin) and mountebanks (John Brinkley) moved in and prospered, as did politicians (Franklin Roosevelt). With network growth, mass culture became pre-eminent, with hit programs and devoted fan clubs on the rise, and more serious educational and artistic endeavors squeezed out by commercial considerations.

These matters get the once-over lightly. If you’re interested and have no prior knowledge, then this book might be interesting; otherwise, you’ve seen it all before. There’s a lot of history from below in the form of letters to presidents, programs and stars, but it’s hard to make out anything particular about mass culture from individual letters, no matter how representative. Analysis is otherwise frustratingly light. There are occasional amusing bits (Ron DeSantis would smile at the way Kansas vote tallying kept Brinkley out of the governor’s chair), but probably not enough of an award for going through the rest of the book.