#BookReview: Dead Air by William Elliott Hazelgrove

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.

This review of Dead Air by William Elliott Hazelgrove was originally written on November 5, 2024.

#BookReview: Journey Through A Land Of Minor Annoyances by Al Kline

Death… Is The Ultimate Road Trip. This is one hilarious book that will leave you in tears – even as it ends exactly the way it must. A trippy road trip through space and time at the edge of the Millenium, this is one of those random, stoner-esque comedies with soul that makes you laugh out loud so very often and yet makes you fall in love with the characters at the same time. Truly an excellent, feel-good work and a great short-ish (under 300 page) escape for the holiday season. Very much recommended.

This review of Journey Through A Land Of Minor Annoyances by Al Kline was originally written on December 12, 2020.

Featured New Release of the Week: When God Rescripts Your Life by Jaci Velasquez

This week, we’re looking at a memoir from a Contemporary Christian Music legend from my teenage years. This week, we’re looking at When God Rescripts Your Life by Jaci Velasquez.

This was an amazing read for me personally. Jaci is a little over 3 yrs older than me, so when she burst onto the CCM scene in the late 90s as a 17yo kid, I was a 14yo kid deeply immersed in that very culture. And part of that culture was that I was actually in church 3x weekly and would thus occassionally be there for concerts from various groups making the church circuit – what Jaci herself had spent most of the previous 17 yrs doing with her parents, though in a different region. (These things tend to be highly regional, for those unaware – mostly due to associated costs, I would assume.) So even when Jaci speaks of her childhood in the back of car and later RV going from church to church singing, I’m at least familiar enough to understand from the angle of one of the people in those very churches what it could be like.

Also, I fully cop that I almost never read book descriptions for my ARC work in particular, unless it is an author or publisher I haven’t previously worked with or know. Since I knew of Jaci from 20 yrs ago, I didn’t read the description here. So when I got to the chapter about her son’s diagnosis of Autism and her reaction to it, this Autistic’s heart dropped. I just *knew* I was about to get a hard core defense of Autism Speaks, the Autistic community’s KKK. At that point I had just finished reading The Boy Who Felt Too Much and was involved in a few other discussions and was very raw.

Fortunately, Jaci doesn’t actually go that direction – I’ve seen far too many others fall into that trap at that very moment, but Jaci makes abundantly clear that she came to take the tack my own mother has taken in raising two Autistic sons. Do the best you can, be the best mother you can, and trust God to fill in the details. I can tell you from experience that this is basically the ideal way to raise an Autistic, and considering the four degrees and near 20 yrs of professional experience between my brother and I, Jaci’s son is in truly good hands there and it was thus a joy to be pleasantly surprised by Jaci’s strength.

And yes, I use her first name because you very much come away from this very conversationally-styled narrative feeling like you really know Jaci, even when your life maybe doesn’t parallel hers quite as much as it seems mine has. (Indeed, her year in London discovering herself? I call what is apparently that exact same year in Earth’s history my personal Year Of Failure, where graduating college was seemingly the only thing I did right – and had already been guaranteed 17 months prior. The year her Autistic son was born? That same year I began the professional career I’ve maintained ever since and also met and married my wife. Our anniversary is even within just a few days before Jaci’s birthday. Jaci speaks in the book about her time as a radio morning show host, I spent one football season working as the guy that presses the buttons to play the commercials when the announcer of the high school football game being broadcast declares “And now time for station identification” or whatever. 🙂 So. Very. Weird. How much we very coincidentally parallel.)

So yeah, this book was *amazing* to me personally, but honestly a truly great memoir generally. Her style is very conversational and humorous, and you’ll find yourself not wanting to put this book down… even when facing more pressing deadlines. Very much recommended.

As always, the Goodreads/ Amazon review:
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