Book Description
"This discerning biography of radio pioneer Mary Margaret McBride illuminates an entire cultural era and offers fascinating parallels to our own time. In Susan Ware"s engaging narrative, McBride emerges as an icon of twentieth century popular culture and its romance with what we now describe as "talk radio." McBride"s story is a tale of power, freedom and connection boldly interpreted by a leading woman"s historian."
—Joyce Antler, author of The Journey Home: How Jewish Women Shaped Modern America
"Well written and lively, Susan Ware"s biography rightly restores McBride to her proper place in broadcasting history."
—Susan Douglas, author of Listening In: Radio and the American Imagination
One of the most beloved radio show hosts of the 1940s and 1950s, Mary Margaret McBride (1899–1976) regularly attracted between six and eight million listeners to her daily one o"clock broadcast. During her twenty years on the air she interviewed tens of thousands of people, from President Harry Truman and Frank Lloyd Wright to Rachel Carson and Zora Neale Hurston. This is her story.