Voice of America

The Voice of America (VOA) is the nation's largest publicly funded broadcasting network, reaching more than a hundred million people worldwide in more than forty languages. Since it first went on the air in February 1942, VOA has undergone a spectacular transformation and now reaches listeners, television viewers, and Internet readers in the four-fifths of the world still denied a completely free press. Using transcripts of radio broadcasts and numerous personal anecdotes, Alan L. Heil Jr. recounts the colorful first six decades of this perennially underfunded organization as it struggled against political pressures, congressional investigations, massive reorganizations, and leadership purges. Heil also provides a front-row seat to the greatest events of that history, from the Cold War and the Vietnam conflict to the Watergate and Lewinsky scandals, from Neil Armstrong's first steps on the moon to ethnic strife in the Balkans and Rwanda, and from the outbreak of HIV/AIDS to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.