Dead Air

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A "granular history" ( Wall Street Journal ) of the greatest hoax in radio history and the panic that followed, which Publishers Weekly calls "a rollicking portrait of a director on the cusp of greatness" and Booklist , in a starred review, says, "Hazelgrove's feverishly focused retelling of the broadcast as well as the fallout makes for a propulsive read as a study of both a cultural moment of mass hysteria and the singular voice at its root." On a warm Halloween Eve, October 30, 1938, during a broadcast of H G. Wells' War of the Worlds , a twenty-three-year-old Orson Welles held his hands up for radio silence in the CBS studio in New York City while millions of people ran out into the night screaming, grabbed shotguns, drove off in cars, and hid in basements, attics, or anywhere they could find to get away from Martians intent on exterminating the human race. As Welles held up his hands to his