The Golden Web: A History of Broadcasting in the United States by Erik BarnouwReview by: Asa BriggsThe American Historical Review, Vol. 74, No. 5 (Jun., 1969), pp. 1746-1747Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1841480 .

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1746 Reviews of Books

Civil War alienated many Catholics. Even more basically, these events caused many to ponder whether Catholicism and Americanism, in the sense of the lib- eral, reformist tradition, were at all compatible.

Flynn's focus, on the other hand, is more on the political interaction between Catholics and the New Deal, which causes him to see greater unanimity of at- titude and more positive results. Taking mild issue with O'Brien, he contends that many Church leaders understood the issues involved in specific reforms and welcomed the application of federal power to them, rather than being motivated by a vague general concern for the well-being of the downtrodden. Moreover, Flynn recognizes that, regardless of the anguish expressed by many of the Church's intellectual and spiritual leaders when the New Deal failed to measure up to their ideals, Catholic voters and politicians usually regarded themselves as being faced with concrete choices-Roosevelt or Landon, federal concern for so- cial welfare or continuation of Coolidge-Hoover individualism. It should be noted, however, that Flynn carries his analysis only through the I936 election, thus avoiding the period in which O'Brien found the greatest amount of disaf- fection, disaffection that seems to be foreshadowed in Flynn's discussion of recog- nition of the Soviet Union and the attitude of the United States toward the anticlerical revolutionary government of Mexico.

O'Brien concludes that many Catholic leaders, except for such liberals as Monsignor John A. Ryan, had decided by I940 that the American reformist ap- proach was at odds with the Church's conception of society. Viewing the New Deal as the creation of the eastern liberal establishment and feeling that Catholic influence, whatever its initial promise, was minimal, the American Catholic was almost as alienated as he had been after the crushing defeat of Al Smith in 1928. Flynn, on the other hand, is inclined to measure progress not by how much or how little Catholic thought influenced New Dealers, but rather to what extent Catholics were absorbed into the mainstream of national life. By that test, the thirties represented a period of great progress for Catholics, and the Roosevelt administration granted them the recognition that they had long sought. Any- one truly concerned with making a balanced judgment should read both books and weigh them according to his own system of values. Eastern Illinois University JOHN D. BUENKER

THE GOLDEN WEB: A HISTORY OF BROADCASTING IN THE UNITED STATES. Volume TI, I933 TO I953. By Erik Barnouw. (New York: Oxford University Press. I968. PP. 39I. $9.00.)

THIS second volume of Mr. Barnouw's history of American broadcasting is as readable and lively as the first. It successfully relates the technical and social his- tory of broadcasting to the political and cultural history of the United States from I933 to I953. Dealing with a period during which there were so many different strands in the history of broadcasting that it is difficult to achieve a satisfactory synthesis, it concentrates on one main theme-the growth of the giant Ameri- can broadcasting networks that were unique in the world. The power struggles are well described; so too, though less fully, are their economic consequences. Yet Barnouw was handicapped by the lack of available documentary evidence,

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Americas I 747

and he has had to rely on recorded interviews with individuals and secondary materials. He has had no access to the business and institutional records of radio concerns, and consequently his history of decision making within the industry rests largely on speculation at the time or on current conjectures.

Political curbs on the domestic freedom of broadcasters after I945 are de- scribed more fully than American broadcasting policies during the Second World War. The story of the war years, as told here, is indeed somewhat patchy. In- teresting contacts were made with other agencies before the setting up of the Office of War Information in June I942. The American Broadcasting Station in Europe (ABSIE) is described, but there is no account of the relationship be- tween SHAEF, the American Army, and international broadcasting interests. Only a very small amount of space is devoted to American broadcasts designed for overseas. Given the focus of concentration, some neglect of this period is per- haps inevitable. It is also difficult, however, to sort out from the narrative pre- sented in the last chapters of the book all the relevant themes in the background history of television, which was to transform the radio world so completely after I953. This will, presumably, be the main theme of Barnouw's third volume.

The general conclusions about the influence of radio on the whole period, set out on the penultimate page, are more brief and less satisfying than the nar- rative. Did network broadcasting create a national in place of a regional con- sciousness? Did it strengthen the executive at the expense of other elements in the body politic and allow it to "manipulate whole populations towards action"? It would have been interesting to have had Barnouw's answers to such questions before he turns from sound radio to television. University of Sussex ASA BRIGGS

AMERICAN DIPLOMACY AND THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR. By Richard P. Traina. [Indiana University International Studies.] (Bloomington: In- diana University Press. I968. PP. xi, 301. $IO.95.)

IN this detailed, factual study of the diplomatic records and the attitudes of the chief American policy makers toward the problems arising from the Spanish Civil War, Richard Traina is haunted, as he believes the diplomats of the I930's were, by the knowledge that America was impotent to achieve world peace yet capable of accelerating the drift toward war.

Certainly the possibility of American leadership toward peace appears, in al- most every event of the period, to have been limited. "Caught in the tide of old decisions," the author observes, "American policy began to drift. . . ." Creative statesmanship was uncommon in the Western world but, the author believes, it was in even shorter supply in Washington than elsewhere. President Franklin Roosevelt, for example, was at first indifferent toward the Spanish problem; later, when his sympathies for the Loyalists emerged, he was irresolute. Thus, largely by presidential default, determination of foreign policy fell to the State Department and to Congress. Secretary of State Cordell Hull was the key figure in directing American policy toward Spain for the first two years of the Civil War. He moved with characteristic caution to avoid being drawn into a general war abroad while recommending that European nations follow the example

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