New Books In Communications

Mitchell Stephens‘s new book, The Voice of America: Lowell Thomas and the Invention of 20th Century Journalism (St. Martins Press, 2017), could be described, in part, as an entertaining book of stories about a legendary American storyteller. Stephens, professor of journalism at New York University, traces Lowell Thomas’s long career from his early days in the rough and tumble world of Chicago newspapers to his later fame as one of America’s earliest and longest-running radio newscasters and its first TV news host. Stephens tells how Thomas documented the First World War, weaving together photos, films and his own remarkable gift for oratory in multimedia presentations that he delivered live to two million people in theaters all over the world. It was Lowell Thomas who first reported the war exploits of Lawrence of Arabia, making both T.E. Lawrence and Thomas himself household names. As a journalism historian and author of the previous book, A History of News, Mitchell Stephens argues that Lowell Thomas hel