THE BOX: AN ORAL HISTORY OF TELEVISION 1920-1961

Television's early years may not interest MTV and X-Files fans, but nostalgic fortysomethings--and teens who have discovered The Honeymooners and Lucille Ball on cable--will find fascinating behind-the-scenes details and a solid outline of television's technological, economic, and public-policy context in this enlightening oral history. Kisseloff, who gathered Manhattanites' memories from the 1890s to World War II in You Must Remember This (1989), met with hundreds of famous and not-so-famous people from television's first generation--as well as relatives of pioneering inventors and entrepreneurs like Philo Farnsworth, "General" Sarnoff, and Ernst Alexanderson, who can no longer speak for themselves. Readers will recognize some names and "voices" : on-screen favorites like Hugh Downs, Betty Furness, Rod Steiger, Barbara Billingsley, and Studs Terkel and well-known offscreen figures like Red Quinlan, Pat Weaver, Arthur Penn, Don Hewitt, and Fred Friendly. But The Box is most valuable in blending the memories of recognized pioneers with those of dozens of invisible foot soldiers in TV's early struggles. A welcome, insightful supplement to Erik Barnouw's classic histories of the medium. Mary Carroll