Expatriates posing as detached yet patriotic American commentators, and using the news-of-the-day voice of the stereotypical radio announcer, sought to turn U.S. opinion against the British and achieve the political objectives of their media-savvy employer--master propagandist Paul Josef Goebbels. Riveting biographies in "Berlin Calling" put real names and faces behind the voices of The Georgia Peach, Mr. O.K., Paul Revere, and others. Were they motivated by antipathy towards New Deal programs or were they simply hucksters in search of a payroll check? Ten years on historical research have culminated in a landmark book with intriguing answers to these puzzling questions.

Published to coincide with the 50th anniversary of America's entry into World War II, this volume chronicles the careers of eight U.S.A. Zone commentators who worked for Nazi propagandist Josef Goebbels. Drawing upon a variety of documentary sources--letters written by the subjects to family, friends, and colleagues; treason trial transcripts; the contents of the BBC's wartime monitoring service; and FBI case files on the broadcasters--the author explores each broadcaster's political and personal motivations, and the influence of their broadcasts.

The half dozen pioneer flyers profiled here were all promising graduates of the Wright Brothers' School of Aviation, which flourished at Simms Station near Dayton, Ohio, from 1910 to 1916. Though they came from dissimilar backgrounds, taken collectively these airmen fairly represent their 113 fellow alumni in their all-consuming love of flying; superb knowledge of the aircraft of the day; a shared dash of sardonic fatalism in an otherwise optimistic outlook on life; gritty persistence; and, absolute devotion to their instructors and the Wrights. The pilots profiled are Arthur L. Welsh, a Russian immigrant who rose to become Orville Wright's chief instructor and salesman to the rich and famous; Howard Warfield Gill, scion of a respected Baltimore family and heir to an international tea dynasty; New York native Archibald Freeman, whose flour-bag bombing of Boston Harbor in 1912 won him national attention as an early exponent of the supremacy of air power; Grover Cleveland Bergdoll, whose early promise as the United States' most celebrated amateur pilot all too quickly devolved into a charge of draft evasion and flight from his native land; George A. Gray, whose unlikely marriage to a Virginia blue-blood resulted in one of the most extraordinary husband and wife exhibition teams ever; and, Howard Max Rinehart, aerial mercenary, international racing competitor, Wright test pilot, South American explorer, and co-owner of one of America's premier charter services. The book gives a fascinating account of six remarkable aviators whose place in the history of flight has been sadly overlooked. Appendices provide a timeline of the Wrights from 1900 to 1948, a guide to thirteen Wright aircraft, and a complete list of students of the Wright Flying School.

Edwards' biographical novella of Howard Rinehart traces the restless, nomadic, and sometimes tormented life of one of America's pioneer giants in the fields of aviation and exploration. Following his subject's career from his early days in Dayton and Brazil to his tragic suicide outside a Hattiesburg, Mississippi boardinghouse, the author portrays Rinehart as a man increasingly divorced by age and ill-health from his earlier pursuit of adventure and alarmingly out-of-step, not only with his homeland's political and social institutions in general, but with the U.S. aeronautical community in particular.