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The first and definitive biography of an audacious adventurer -- the most famous journalist of his time -- who more than anyone invented contemporary journalism.Tom Brokaw says: "Lowell Thomas so deserves this lively account of his legendary life. He was a man for all seasons."Few Americans today recognize his name, but Lowell Thomas was as well known in his time as any American journalist ever has been. Raised in a Colorado gold-rush town, Thomas covered crimes and scandals for local then Chicago newspapers. He began lecturing on Alaska, after spending eight days in Alaska. Then he assigned himself to report on World War I and returned with an exclusive: the story of "Lawrence of Arabia." In 1930, Lowell Thomas began delivering America's initial radio newscast. His was the trusted voice that kept Americans abreast of world events in turbulent decades - his face familiar, too, as the narrator of the most popular newsreels. His contemporaries were also dazzled by his life. In a prime-time special after Thomas died in 1981, Walter Cronkite said that Thomas had "crammed a couple of centuries worth of living" into his eighty-nine years. Thomas delighted in entering "forbidden" countries -- Tibet, for example, where he met the teenaged Dalai Lama. The Explorers Club has named its building, its awards, and its annual dinner after him. Journalists in the last decades of the twentieth century -- including Cronkite and Tom Brokaw -- acknowledged a profound debt to Thomas. Though they may not know it, journalists today too are following a path he blazed. In The Voice of America, Mitchell Stephens offers a hugely entertaining, sometimes critical portrait of this larger than life figure.



About the Author

Mitchell Stephens

Mitchell Stephens' newest book -- a biography of the seminal journalist and adventurer Lowell Thomas -- will be published by St. Martin's Press in June 2017.

He published three new books, all of which he had been working on for many years, in 2014:

* Imagine There's No Heaven: How Atheism Helped Create the Modern World -- a history of atheism and its accomplishments (Palgrave Macmillan)

* Beyond News: The Future of Journalism - a historical argument for a wiser journalism, based on research at Harvard's Shorenstein Center (Columbia University Press)

* Journalism Unbound -- a call for journalism and journalism education to aim higher (Oxford University Press)

Professor Stephens is also the author of A History of News, an extended history of journalism that has been translated into four languages and was a New York Times "Notable Book of the Year." (A new edition was published by Oxford University Press in 2006.) His well reviewed book, the rise of the image the fall of the word, a historical analysis of our current communications revolution, was published in 1998 and is available from Oxford University Press.

In addition, Professor Stephens has written two textbooks: Broadcast News (now in its fourth edition) , long the most widely used radio and television news textbook, and the co-author of Writing and Reporting the News (a third edition of this book was published in 2007 by Oxford) .

He is a long-time professor of Journalism at New York University's Arthur L. Carter Institute and has served three terms as chair of the Department of Journalism there. In 2009 he was a fellow at the Harvard's Shorenstein Center, working on a project on the future of journalism.

Over the years, Professor Stephens has written numerous articles on media issues and aspects of contemporary thought for publications such as the Daedalus, New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post and the Columbia Journalism Review. He was one of five editors of the book Covering Catastrophe: Broadcast Journalists Report September 11 (Bonus Books) .

In 2001, Professor Stephens completed a trip around the world, during which he reported on globalization for the public radio program "Marketplace" and the webzine Feed and wrote essays on travel for LonelyPlanet.com. His commentaries have aired on NPR's "On the Media." He has been history consultant to the Newseum.

Professor Stephens has been involved in a number of media development projects overseas since 1993 - including two large State Department University-Partnership Grants, which he directed, with Rostov State University in Russia. Professor Stephens has also taught or organized exchanges in Georgia, Ghana and India. He was director of the Russian-American Journalism Institute in Rostov.

In 2006, Professor Stephens won a gr



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