CBQ CLASSICSVintage Works Still Relevant Today

What books (if any) does a longtime reviewer and collector retain upon retirement? That quandary faced me a couple of years ago as I began to cull a large media and telecommunications collection built over 45 years of editing CBQ and its predecessors. Given that total elimination wasn’t a viable option for my peace of mind, I needed to make some difficult choices: Which books to retain? Which to go along with me to that legendary “desert island” called retirement? Every title discussed in this three-part essay series survived the cut before I donated the larger part of the library to two specialized institutional collections. So, why these particular “keepers”? Overall, these are among the best researched works that are likely to hold their substantive value over time. There’s an emphasis on technological development and its social and economic impact—and a strong American bias because that’s the milieu I know best. And some books simply were (and remain) enjoyable reads that I may return to. There are several limitations to this selection other than those primary biases. With but two partial exceptions (multivolume sets by Barnouw and Briggs described next) all were published in the half-century since Booknotes began in 1969. Only English language books are included. All are monographs—despite many good ones, no edited anthologies are included. The subject focus is admittedly fairly narrow: there are, for example, no general mass communications or journalism (a massive literature in itself), very little on programming, and no histories of computers (despite many good ones) and their ubiquitous impacts. This first portion of a review essay (that will appear here and in the next two issues) focuses on broadcasting both here and in Britain. Part 2 (next issue) will review American and international telecommunications, while Part 3 will assess some of the best relevant biographies. Finally, all of what follows is based on the opinions of but one reader...