You've already heard about it from network TV, CNN, the print media, and word of mouth: Millions of Americans now listen to world band shortwave radio, broadcasting's fastest-growing segment. And Passport to World Band Radio is the world's #1 selling shortwave publication. Reveals what's on hour by hour, country by country, and channel by channel. 100 photos.

World band radio is a trusted source of daily entertainment and crisis reporting for millions of Americans. Passport, the #1 seller in the field, provides exactly what world band listeners want. Entering its 21st year, it outsells all competitors combined.

Elegant rusticity meets unpretentious luxury in the work of this award-winning architecture firm. Howard Backen, award-winning principal of the architecture firm Backen Gillam Kroeger, is at the center of a popular movement in home design that emphasizes comfort over pretension and elegant simplicity over complication that tends to serve the ego of architects. This volume, the first on his work and that of the firm, is an artful exploration of that this aesthetic, featuring farmhouses in the Napa Valley, hilltop homes, seaside retreats, and lakeside hideaways. Throughout the work, a sense of intimacy, warmth, and informality pervades. Natural materials, such as wood, stone, and brick form the foundations, walls, and ceilings of these subtly luxurious spaces, while nature itself plays a considered role that is at once complementary and also intricately conjoined with the work. Long vistas open outward toward sun-drenched valleys from the window-lined wall of a bedroom in one home, while more immediate scenes of steeply rising hillsides and hidden lakes appear from just beyond the back stoop--and the rough-hewn-board dock--of another. Sensitive, alluring, and wonderfully resonant with the suggestion of invitation, the work of Backen Gillam Kroeger is both thrilling to the eye and restorative to the soul.

A guide to what's on, how to listen and what to buy

Shortwave broadcasting originated in the 1920s, when stations used the new technology to increase their range in order to serve foreign audiences and reach parts of their own country not easily otherwise covered. The early days of shortwave radio were covered in On the Short Waves, 1923-1945: Broadcast Listening in the Pioneer Days of Radio, published by McFarland in 1999 (paperback 2007). Then, two companion volumes were published, picking up the story after World War II. They were Listening on the Short Waves, 1945 to Today (McFarland, 2008; paperback 2010), which focuses on the shortwave listening community, and the present Broadcasting title, about the stations themselves and their environment. The heart of the book is a detailed, year-by-year account of the shortwave bands in each year from 1945 to 2008. It reviews what American listeners were hearing on the international and domestic shortwave bands, describes the arrivals and departures of stations, and recounts important events. The book describes the several categories of broadcasters--international, domestic, private, religious, clandestine and pirate. It explains the impact of relay stations, frequency management, and jamming. It also addresses the considerable changes in shortwave broadcasting since the end of the Cold War. The book is richly illustrated and indexed, and features a bibliography and extensive notes.