Broadcasts from the Blitz: How Edward R. Murrow Helped Lead America into War Book

Broadcast from the Blitz: How Edward R. Murrow Helped Lead America into War is a good book, within limits. It's not particularly a biography of Murrow as much as it is a study of U. S./British relations on the eve of World War II. Phillip Seib's thesis is that Murrow was instrumental, through his pioneering radio news broadcasts, in nudging American public opinion away from isolationism and towards belligerency. Then there are the limits. Seib credits the America First crowd too liberally in shaping isolationism. He never mentions how fresh was the memory of the slaughtering trench warfare of World War I in the minds of the public. Isolationism was not a view held only by crackpots. Also, Japan doesn't appear until page 156, just twenty pages shy of the end of the book. It's pure speculation the course that the U. S. would have taken had the Japanese failed to attack Pearl Harbor.

In some ways these concerns are simply my nit-pickings about the larger historical perspective. The book itself is a great read and full of vignettes and dialogue involving everyone of importance in the shaping of U. S. public opinion. It's based on solid research, well-written, and even humorous at times. I can recommend this book to anyone with interest in WW II or the history of journalism, particularly journalistic ethics. Here's one quote from Murrow to an audience at the Waldorf in New York City: "In reporting this new kind of warfare we have tried to prevent our own prejudices and loyalties from coming between you and the information which it is our duty to impart. We may not always have succeeded. An individual who can entirely avoid being influenced by the atmosphere in which he works might not even be a good reporter…" (p. 149)