Talk Radios America, Brian Rosenwald
Talk Radios America, Brian Rosenwald
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Talk Radio's America
How an Industry Took Over a Political Party That Took Over the United States

Author: Brian Rosenwald

Narrator: Christopher Grove

Unabridged: 12 hr 10 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 11/26/2019


Synopsis

The cocreator of the Washington Post's Made by History blog reveals how the rise of conservative talk radio gave us a Republican Party incapable of governing and paved the way for Donald Trump.

Radio hosts form a deep bond with their audience, which gives them enormous political power. Unlike elected representatives, however, they must entertain their audience or watch their ratings fall. Talk radio boosted the Republican agenda in the 1990s, but two decades later, escalation in the battle for the airwaves pushed hosts toward ever more conservative, outrageous, and hyperbolic content.

Donald Trump borrowed conservative radio hosts' playbook and gave Republican base voters the kind of pugnacious candidate they had been demanding for decades. By 2016, a political force no one intended to create had completely transformed American politics.

About Brian Rosenwald

Brian Rosenwald is Coeditor-in-Chief of Made by History, a daily Washington Post history section, and a historical consultant for the Slate podcast Whistlestop. He has written for the Washington Post, CNN.com, Politico, and The Week, among others, and has discussed contemporary politics on CNN, NPR, and the Sirius XM Radio channel POTUS: Politics of the United States. Rosenwald is Scholar in Residence at the Partnership for Effective Public Administration and Leadership (PEPAL) program at the University of Pennsylvania.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Robert on December 23, 2020

The first half of the book focuses on the rise of rush Limbaugh during the early 1990’s. The second half of the book moves into mainly the Obama years and the rise of Trump. The author’s main point is that conservative radio is a huge echo chamber where hosts entertain listeners with ever increasing......more

Goodreads review by Peter on September 26, 2020

I recently finished another great book that can be added to the “How We Got Here/Why We’re Polarized” pile. I think this book makes a great companion book to Steve Kornacki’s “The Red and The Blue: The 1990s and the Birth of Political Tribalism”. Before Facebook memes and InfoWars, Breitbart and Fox......more

Goodreads review by Elizabeth on April 03, 2024

Informative, thoroughly researched and comprehensive but written in a rather dry academic style. Not exactly light reading, but an interesting history.......more

Goodreads review by Erik on December 08, 2024

"Talk Radio's America" covers the rise of conservative radio from Rush Limbaugh's debut in 1988 to the 2016 election. It shows how talk radio ended up clashing with responsible political governance: whereas politicians have to compromise in order to govern, conservative talk radio, driven by the pro......more

Goodreads review by Della on February 02, 2022

This will definitely be one of my best reads of 2022. Since I was an avid talk radio listener in the 90s and early 2000s, actually up until the Trump era, when so many sold their souls, I already knew a lot of this stuff. But he digs much deeper. For example, popular wisdom has it that the end of the......more