Amazon.com
Beginning with the explosion of the dirigible Hindenburg in 1937, this book and double-CD collection of audio broadcasts recalls a series of dramatic events so urgent that they interrupted scheduled broadcasting in America. The text of this package includes capsule explanations of such events as the attack on Pearl Harbor and the death of Elvis, accompanied by dramatic black-and-white stock photos. Introduced by the sonorous voice of TV journalist Bill Kurtis, the recordings of the news broadcasts revive the panic and thrill of some of the defining moments (mostly American) of the 20th century. This updated second edition includes three new events: the impeachment of President Clinton, the tragic shootings at Columbine High School, and the death of John F. Kennedy Jr. in an airplane crash. New recordings from the assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald, the Apollo 13 mission, and the Munich Olympics tragedy have also been added.
We Interrupt This Broadcast offers, in some ways, a strange view of the past. News that interrupts broadcasts is always sensational and usually tragic. Of the 41 recordings, only five or so don't involve assassinations, explosions, death, or defeat. Furthermore, only the deaths of Marilyn Monroe and Princess Diana represent the female side of modern events. Nevertheless, these recordings will fascinate many listeners too young to have heard the original broadcasts, and those who were alive at the time might enjoy hearing them again in all their crackling, nostalgic glory. --Maria Dolan
From Publishers Weekly
First published in 1998, this book and double-CD set documents, in text, audio and black-and-white photographs, the moments when history, for better or for worse (though usually for worse), was made in an instant. Garner's updated third edition includes segments on the 2000 presidential election reporting fiasco ("the most embarrassing election night coverage since... `Dewey Defeats Truman' ") and the events of September 11 (the collapse of Tower 2 in a "terrifying ballet of twisting, screaming metal"). In addition to the CDs' reports and sound bites dramatically introduced and explained by longtime journalist Kurtis each event gets about four pages of coverage, with an efficient summary and at least half a dozen photos. A smiling, handsome Robert Kennedy on one page becomes a mortally wounded man on the next, while on the CD, reporter Andrew West asks the senator a strategy question, and then "Senator Kennedy has been shot! Is that possible?" he cries. "Is it possible?... Oh my God... He still has the gun, the gun is pointed at me right at this moment! Take a hold of his thumb and break it if you have to!" It doesn't matter that the clips and the photos are old news: from the Hindenburg explosion to the death of Elvis, and from the crumbling of the Berlin Wall to the shooting at Columbine High, these are the kinds of moments that still shock and amaze. This moving book is "a tribute of sorts" to the events that defined eras, the journalists who reported on them and the media television, radio that made us all witnesses.Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
Booklist Review
As important as the development of photography in the nineteenth century, the development of broadcasting and sound recording is hugely significant in the twentieth century, as we now can actually relive what happened during the most significant moments of our era. Garner has done a masterful job of collecting these moments, and with the accompanying CD, one can listen over and over to the moments that shaped this century. We hear about the Hindenburg disaster (announcer Herb Morrison cries, "Oh, the humanity!"), the attack on Pearl Harbor (FDR's "day that will live in infamy" speech), the JFK assassination, Neil Armstrong on the moon ("One small step for man"), and even the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. In addition, Garner has collected bits and pieces of more obscure history that will bring back memories to the older folk and offer a valuable history lesson to the young (such as the Cuban missile crisis and the death of Marilyn Monroe). In the words of Walter Cronkite, who supplies the foreword, "You are there."
Kirkus Reviews
Well-done if rather odd work. Garner, who has a lengthy background in radio and has produced a number of audio books, has now put together a mixed-media package, including both a book and two audio compact discs, documenting some of the century's most extraordinary moments as they were first described in the electronic media. Ranging from the Hindenburg disaster to the death of Princess Diana, the book and its accompanying CDs (narrated by television journalist Bill Kurtis) provide a swift, accurate, and vivid survey, likely to jog the memories of its audience. The drawback is, of course, that so many of the seminal events of the past seventy years didn't emerge as breaking news. What we are left with is not so much a record of the century's liminal moments as it is a survey of the way that the media handled particular events. Still, there's a thrill to hearing the first, often shocked or shaky announcement of John Glenn orbiting the earth, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and John F.Kennedy, Richard Nixon's resignation, the beginning of Desert Storm, and it's intriguing and instructive to follow the evolution of broadcast journalism. The fervid foreword by Walter Cronkite reminds readers of just how essential a free press has been in the evolution of the age.
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