Hardy Perennial

In the whole uncertain business of radio, broadcasters of house programs lead the most uncertain careers. And of all such radio ephemera, none is more ephemeral than the studio book critic. Efforts to put book talk on the air have generally been short-lived.

Unique exception is San Francisco's Joseph Henry Jackson, whose weekly Reader's Guide series concluded last week its 14th year of continuous broadcasting. His program rates, despite its cultural stigma, as radio's outstanding hardy perennial. Originated by Book Critic Jackson over KGO (then in Oakland) in 1924, Reader's Guide was extended to cover all of the Pacific Coast when NBC added KGO to its Blue network. Guide Jackson now splits the network Sunday evenings at 9:30 EDST with Gossiper Walter Winchell, making his literary advice available to all of the West and the South.

In a recent Macmillan survey, western book sellers picked Reader's Guide broadcasts as most influential swayer of readers' habits. Book sales react automatically to Jackson's by no means low-brow judgments. He damned Hervey Allen's Action at Aquila, Charles Morgan's Sparkenbroke and Lloyd Douglas' Home for Christmas out of West Coast best-seller lists while they were doing well throughout the rest of the country. His one conspicuous failure was Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People. A full broadcast of dispraise was unavailing against Californian determination to win and influence.

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