How War Came

New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc, 1939. First Edition [stated], presumed first printing. Hardcover. Good/Fair. 266, [6] pages. Front endpaper map of Europe on March 9, 1939. Rear endpaper map of Europe on September 3, 1939. DJ is worn, torn, soiled, and chipped. Pencil erasure on fep. Signed by author on half title. Date in ink and embossed stamp of Charles O. Swanson on half-title. Raymond Gram Swing (March 25, 1887 - December 22, 1968) was an American print and broadcast journalist. He was one of the most influential news commentators of his era, heard by people worldwide as a leading American voice from Britain during World War II. Known originally as Raymond Swing, he adopted his wife's last name in 1919 and became known as Raymond Gram Swing. During the 1920s, Swing migrated to the new medium of radio journalism. Swing joined the Mutual Broadcasting System, where, in 1936, he began to broadcast on European affairs, emerging as a strong voice of opposition to Adolf Hitler and Fascism. As the Nazis rose in power and influence and began to threaten Europe, Mutual increased his broadcasts to five times a week. He also gave a number of lectures in the United States and abroad on the dangers of Fascism. Because of his prestige and credibility, Swing was chosen to be chairman of the Council for Democracy, a group founded in 1940 to support American rearmament and combat domestic isolationism. Swing was the narrator for the cartoon series How War Came, nominated in 1941 for an Academy Award in the Best Short Subject, Cartoons category. During the war, Swing was reportedly the nation's highest-paid radio commentator. In book form, the two sets of broadcasts made by the author:- the Czechoslovak crisis of the Spring; the period from the Nazi-Soviet pact to the declaration of war.