New Book DEAD AIR Relates the Untold Story of Orson Welle's War of the Worlds Broadcast

    CHICAGO, IL, November 18, 2024 /24-7PressRelease/ -- A woman who had a baby is abandoned by her nurses and told the world was ending. Another woman just married finds herself alone at her reception and dances the Charleston. A man comes home to find his wife facing a vial of poison saying she would rather die by suicide than by Martians. A man just out of surgery rips the tubes out of his arms and drives home bleeding all over his car. Another man packs crying girls into his car and ties them to the hood and the trunk and drives full speed down a highway with the doors off. People run out of bars and restaurants without paying. People flood chruches for salvation. A whole town heads for the hills when the power goes off. A woman breaks her arm running down stairs. A man confesses to his affairs to his wife thinking it is the end of the world. Switchboards are jammed nationwide. The military puts out an an alert saying the Martians are not real. Accidents break out as people drive full speed trying to get away. A Martian water tower is shot up by farmers with shotguns.

We just went thorugh an election where all news was suspect. No one was sure what was real and what was "fake news." The granddaddy of all fake news occured on October 30 1938 when Orson Welles went on the radio and broadcast his rendition of HG Welles War of the Worlds novel. Radio would never be the same. Welles used a breaking news bulletin format that convinced people Martians had landed in Grovers Mill New NJ and were exterminationg humans with a heat ray gun and poisonous gas. Welles had a reporter die on the air and then for six seconds commanded silence, shooting out six seconds of Dead Air across the 126 CBS affiliates and starting a wave of panic that would change radio and media forever.

Getting rave reviews from the Wall Street Journal and Publishers Weekly, the new book by Best Selling Author William Ellliott Hazelgrove corrects the revisionist history that the broadcast was mostly confined to the East Coast. Digging through newspapers coast to coast Hazelgrove found Welles tsunami of fake news brought about unheard of cannage that until now has not been reported on. Dead Air the Night Orson Welles Terrified America published by Rowman and Littlefield goes on sale today.

William Elliott Hazelgrove is the National Bestselling author of ten novels and thirteen narrative nonfiction titles. His books have received starred reviews in Publisher's Weekly, Kirkus, and Booklist and have been optioned for movies. He was the Ernest Hemingway Writer in Residence where he wrote in the attic of Ernest Hemingway's birthplace. He has written articles and reviews for USA Today, The Smithsonian Magazine, and other publications and has been featured on NPR All Things. The New York Times, LA Times, Chicago Tribune, CSPAN, and USA Today have all covered his books with features. Learn more at www.williamhazelgrove.com.

Website: http://www.williamhazelgrove.com
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