First things first: I LOVED THIS BOOK! There. Now if I could only explain why. I only ran across it because author Larry Matthews is, like me, a veteran of the Army Security Agency (ASA), a now long-defunct, secret branch of the military, which is barely mentioned in I USED TO BE IN RADIO, a memoir of his mostly successful, peripatetic path in broadcast news and the radio business.

Bored with college, following his discharge from the Army in 1964, Matthews drifted into radio work, beginning with small, pissant AM stations in Virginia, doing the news, advertisements and DJ-ing. FM radio was still new then. In fact car radios seldom had FM. From Virginia, he moved on to bigger and better things, as a reporter and news director for various stations in Washington, DC, Cleveland, San Antonio, Detroit and back to the DC area in an illustrious, award-winning career that spanned more than thirty years. Then it all came crashing down when Matthews ran afoul of the FBI while researching a story about child porn on the internet, and was himself accused and indicted of trafficking in child pornography, a landmark case testing the rights of journalists and the First Amendment. After months of delays and appeals, Matthews' second marriage ended in divorce and he was sentenced to eighteen months in a Federal prison camp in the remote mountains of Pennsylvania. (His first marriage fell victim to too many uprootings and moves as he pursued his career.) Matthews then offers a detailed look at life inside the walls of a prison and the strange characters he interacts with there, as he is sustained by the letters and frequent visits of a new woman friend, who is there to meet him upon his release.

In an Epilogue, Matthews makes an effective case about the injustice of his conviction and incarceration and bad precedent it set regarding journalists, free speech and the press.

I especially enjoyed Matthews' style. He writes in an easy, direct, conversational manner that comes across like a close friend, sitting across the table, telling you about his life. Did I say I loved this book? Well, I did. Absolutely loved it. Maybe I'll call him. We'll swap war stories about our ASA days. My very highest recommendation.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the Cold War memoir, SOLDIER BOY: AT PLAY IN THE ASA ( )