ABSTRACT
Edward R. Murrow: A Life by Mark Betka On a cool September evening somewhere in America in 1940, a family gathers around a vacuum-tube radio. As someone adjusts the tuning knob, a distinct and serious voice cuts through the airwaves: “is … is London.” And so begins a riveting rst-hand account of the infamous “London Blitz,” the wholesale bombing of that city by the German air force in World War II. Behind the microphone, sitting atop a London rooftop thousands of miles from the United States, sits a young journalist, Edward R. Murrow. With this and other wartime broadcasts, Murrow would spearhead the use of radio-based reporting and almost singlehandedly create the concept of “broadcast journalism.”
