When Breeze FM, a radio station in the provincial Zambian town of Chipata, hired an elderly retired schoolteacher in 2003, no one anticipated the skyrocketing success that would follow. A self-styled grandfather on air, Gogo Breeze seeks intimacy over the airwaves and dispenses advice on a wide variety of grievances and transgressions. Multiple voices are broadcast and juxtaposed through call-ins and dialogue, but free speech finds its ally in the radio elder who, by allowing people to be heard and supporting their claims, reminds authorities of their obligations toward the disaffected. Harri Englund provides a masterfully detailed study of this popular radio personality that addresses broad questions of free speech in Zambia and beyond. By drawing on ethnographic insights into political communication, Englund presents multivocal morality as an alternative to dominant Euro-American perspectives, displacing the simplistic notion of voice as individual personal property—an idea common in both policy and activist rhetoric. Instead, Englund focuses on the creativity and polyphony of Zambian radio while raising important questions about hierarchy, elderhood, and ethics in the public sphere. A lively, engaging portrait of an extraordinary personality, Gogo Breeze will interest Africanists, scholars of radio and mass media, and anyone interested in the history and future of free speech.

Being Gogo Breeze -- Mass-mediated elderhood -- The grandfather's voices -- Obligations on and off air -- On air: beyond charity -- Off air: private service -- Women and children -- Between feminisms and paternalisms -- Children's voices -- Coda -- Radio obligations -- Appendix A: confronting mill owners -- Appendix B: helping Miriam Nkhoma

"Communication for Development is a multidisciplinary area of study and work that is based on two-way models of communication, going beyond diffusion and dissemination of information. Its functions range from engaging stakeholders in problem analysis and risk assessment to supporting behavior and social change. The experiences recounted here are drawn from the various sessions of the Congress and emphasize the value of using Communication for Development to engage stakeholders in a professional and systematic manner for more effective and sustainable project design and implementation."--BOOK JACKET.

Mike Dakas story is a fascinating account that is at once the story of an extraordinary journalist, and rich insight into the history of the media and journalism in Zambia and Southern Africa. Born into humble circumstances, his journey took him into journalism as reporter and editor and then to shaping and leading the Zambia Institute of Mass Communication which taught generations of journalists through changing political circumstances. Never one to shy away from a challenge, Daka retired from Zamcom to start Breeze FM in Chipata, a radio station that became internationally renowned for its unique character as a commercial operation that provides community and public service.

Ever since Newton Minow taught us sophisticates to bemoan the descent of television into a vast wasteland, the dyspeptic chorus of jeremiahs who insist that television news in particular has gone from gold to dross gets noisier and noisier. Charles Ponce de Leon says here, in effect, that this is misleading, if not simply fatuous. He argues in this well-paced, lively, readable book that TV news has changed in response to broader changes in the TV industry and American culture. It is pointless to bewail its decline. "That s the Way It Is "gives us the very first history of American television news, spanning more than six decades, from Camel News Caravan to Countdown with Keith Oberman and The Daily Show. Starting in the latter 1940s, television news featured a succession of broadcasters who became household names, even presences: Eric Sevareid, Walter Cronkite, David Brinkley, Peter Jennings, Brian Williams, Katie Couric, and, with cable expansion, people like Glenn Beck, Jon Stewart, and Bill O Reilly. But behind the scenes, the parallel story is just as interesting, involving executives, producers, and journalists who were responsible for the field s most important innovations. Included with mainstream network news programs is an engaging treatment of news magazines like "60 Minutes" and "20/20, " as well as morning news shows like "Today" and "Good Morning America." Ponce de Leon gives ample attention to the establishment of cable networks (CNN, and the later competitors, Fox News and MSNBC), mixing in colorful anecdotes about the likes of Roger Ailes and Roone Arledge. Frothy features and other kinds of entertainment have been part and parcel of TV news from the start; viewer preferences have always played a role in the evolution of programming, although the disintegration of a national culture since the 1970s means that most of us no longer follow the news as a civic obligation. Throughout, Ponce de Leon places his history in a broader cultural context, emphasizing tensions between the public service mission of TV news and the quest for profitability and broad appeal."

As Evan Friss shows in his mordant history of urban bicycling in the late nineteenth century, the bicycle has long told us much about cities and their residents. In a time when American cities were chaotic, polluted, and socially and culturally impenetrable, the bicycle inspired a vision of an improved city in which pollution was negligible, transport was noiseless and rapid, leisure spaces were democratic, and the divisions between city and country blurred. Friss focuses not on the technology of the bicycle but on the urbanisms that bicycling engendered. Bicycles altered the look and feel of cities and their streets, enhanced mobility, fueled leisure and recreation, promoted good health, and shrank urban spaces as part of a larger transformation that altered the city and the lives of its inhabitants, even as the bicycle's own popularity fell, not to rise again for a century. --Publisher's description.

A journey of self-discovery. Gogo wasnt exactly normal, but when he solved a twenty-year-old case of thousands of missing people, he discovered that there were stranger things out there in the wild, wild world than himself. His discovery inevitably leads him into a strange land (the US of 2026) where machines could talk and some people were compelled to live in underground cities. Aided by his lovely boss, a whacky machine, and his abnormal abilities, Gogo must stop a maniacal senator from fulfilling his maniacal scheme for world domination. The adventures of Gogo begins.