For fifty years radio dominated the airwaves and the American consciousness as the first “mass medium.” EMPIRE OF THE AIR examines the lives of three remarkable men who shared the primary responsibility for this invention and its early success and whose genius, friendship, rivalry and enmity combined in unexpected and often tragic ways. This is the story of Lee de Forest, a clergyman’s flamboyant son, who invented the Audion tube; Edwin Howard Armstrong, a brilliant, withdrawn inventor who pioneered FM technology; and David Sarnoff, a hard-driving Russian immigrant who created the most powerful communications company on the planet.