Radio Vox Populi: Talk Radio from the Romantic to the Anglo-Saxon

Talk radio hosts - from the cerebral and sophisticated to the crude and rude - lure listeners to their radio stations with faux friendship and pseudo authority. Their shows power a cultural forcefield, as they have for generations. Radio Vox Populi provides an account of ubiquitous talk radio, from its inception to its current overwhelming societal power via a comparison of the Italian manifestation of the medium with that of the United States. The story is told through ten chapters written by radio scholars and practitioners with an introduction and conclusion by Professors Laufer and Ruggiero - whose American/Italian university partnership includes a focus on talk radio. Radio Vox Populi is a study from insiders of the history of the medium, its contemporary influence over masses of listeners in America and Europe, and the book interrogates talk radio culture from the point of view of both performer histrionics and audience response.