1939 wasn't exactly the most typical year in the life of Western civilization, and September 21 wasn't exactly the best day of the year. The Premeir of Romania was assassinated by facist sympathizers, the fall of Poland was all but a done deal, and France completed its general mobilization of armed forces for the fight that was fated to happen. In America, Roosevelt was preparing to make a speech to a joint session of Congress to revise the neutrality laws in an attempt to offer aid to our allies while keeping the country out of the war in Europe. Possibly because of the nature of what the President was trying to accomplish, the complete broadcast day of WJSV, the Washington DC CBS owned-and-operated station, recorded every minute of their broadcast day on a series of 16 inch transcription discs (which were standard for recordings of broadcasts at the time) and given to the National Archives, where the originals still reside.

This cassette album, representing 18 hours worth of material, presents the bulk of this material (deleting the first half hour, which included an emergency signoff for transmitter adjustments, and an evening repeat of Roosevelt's speech). There are several highlights: Arthur Godfrey does the morning show in his influential plainspoken style, George Washington Carver is interviewed on "Strange as it Seems", Major Bowles hosts his "Original Amateur Hour", an excellent "Columbia Workshop" production, and lots of big band music (including Louis Prima's orchestra) take you into the night. In addition, you get to hear the news bullitens, technical goofs, and advertisements of the day.

That's not to say that there aren't a few things that will make an unsuspecting modern audience cringe. There are two or three segments that present the standard-for-the-time stereotypes about African Americans ("Amos and Andy" appear in this set too, but they're far from the worst offenders in this territory.) While I am giving this set high marks as a snapshot of the time and a one-of-a-kind recording, I would be in remiss if I didn't warn you about the trouble spots.

Generally speaking, the book describes how the individual has subscribed to the work ethic through the centuries under various types of conditions based on birth, education, skill, tenacity and pure luck.

The book also deals with "the debates related to work and welfare that has always been a controversy over public assistance to the deserving and undeserving poor."

One great theme that is illustrated quite well throughout the book is the persistent challenge for the individual, especially one taught to believe that hard work will be rewarded with opportunities, to delicately balance between work, pleasure, personal, and leisure activities. I keep asking myself (for the first time in my life) why can't people work smarter, not harder in America? Unfortunately, this issue must be resolved by reading other books since the author did not faithfully address this important topic.

This book has an incredible number of footnotes backed up with an exorbitant amount of pages pointing to other references. I found the book to be extremely difficult to read. I had to review chapters over and over again, to figure out what the author was trying to explain. Some very important parts were simply "glossed over." There are sections throughout the book that require proofreading for the next edition because it is repetitive and not carefully organized.

Credit must be given to the author for the extremely valuable gems that I did synthesize from the book. It was worth it. However, please condense it into fifty pages. This is a wonderful book!