I'm a professional American historian, and have been for about twenty-five years. Richard Bartlett was a productive American historian for twice that many. I'm a rank amateur licensed ham. Bartlett was ham born of hams for much of his 95 years among us. Naturally, having just begun getting my feet wet on 20 and 40 meters and seeking understand the culture of my new hobby, I bought Richard Bartlett's book believing it would be a great place to start.

Using the ARRL QST magazine as a key resource for tracing the social history of ham radio, Bartlett traces the role of amateurs in radio from the technology's birth in work of Marconi and Tesla, through the early days of competing associations and the triumph of the ARRL under the leadership of Percy Hyram Maxim, to the renowned utility of amateur radio service in the face of expeditiona, natural disaster, and war.

Protecting amateur frequencies against competing commercial interests, the importance of demonstrating relevance to officials and the populace, and the triumphal narrative of amateur determination to successfully turn sows ears into silk purses stand out as recurring themes. There are also interesting chapters exploring the role of ham radio operators and the development of radio technology in aviation, polar exploration, and seafaring in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Two small negatives are worth noting. First, the chronological jumping back and forth that occurs between chapters, not uncommon in thematically organized histories, is a bit jarring at times. Second, and more importantly, I have a hard time accepting Barlett's claim that there is nothing new to be known in terms of ham radio social history after 1950. He concludes that only technological changes are worth investigating at that point.

Certainly, the FCC's regulatory structure, hammered out in the 1930s, and the willingness of Hams to agree to self-regulate shapes ham culture. I suspect there has been a lot of cultural continuity driven by those early hams of the Silent through Baby Boom generation, and yet, if the culture of computer integrated and software defined radio experimentation, often maligned by the boat anchor set, the launch of amateur satellites, and the invention of the ubiquitous wireless technology that pervades our lives today has not spawned distinctive cultural developments through the Cold War and beyond, then perhaps it is a hobby in its terminal stage. I hope not. Bartlett's claim is, I suspect, a natural outgrowth of his nostalgic review of his own 70+ years of personal experience as a ham (this was one of Bartlett's last historical works prior to his death in his 90s in 2015).

Those are minor points and this is a great place to start exploring the history and culture of radio amateurs in a glorious period of amateur inventiveness in American history.

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Category	Radio

The World of Ham Radio, 1901-1950: A Social History