"Dehydrating in front of an audience," at this 1957 Books and Authors Luncheon, well-known dramatist and writer S. J. Perelman gives a chilling verbal portrait of the writer's life.

At this Books and Authors Luncheon, Vance Packard tries to dispel the idea that his book, The Hidden Persuaders (1957), is merely about the quirks and absurdities of advertising's use of "motivational research." 

In newly recovered audio from our collections, Dwight D. Eisenhower addresses a Books and Authors Luncheon audience. Historian David Pietrusza weighs in on the surviving audio from the Nov 23, 1948 speech.

Host Steve Sullivan brings legendary jazz drummer Pete La Roca onto Around New York for an interview about a life and career in jazz. 

In this 1954 talk, J. Robert Oppenheimer surmises that today's pressing questions "will be transmuted before they are answered" and that "the very process of discovery will shatter the concepts that we today use to describe our puzzlement."

Richard M. Nixon chooses this 1966 appearance at the Overseas Press Club to lay out his position on Vietnam, but not before amiably ribbing Democrats and the press.

In this 1959 episode of Recordings, E.T.C., Host Edward Tatnall Canby presents the "voices" of two canonical storytellers: Mark Twain and Hans Christian Andersen. Neither Twain nor Andersen is actually featured on these recordings, but Canby delights in the authenticity of Hal Holbrook's portrayal of Twain and Boris Karloff's readings of Andersen's tales.

Promoting his collection Parents Keep Out, poems aimed primarily at teenagers, the poet Ogden Nash displays the well-known rhyming ability and whimsical attitude of his widely appreciated, inimitable light verse at this 1951 Books and Authors Luncheon.

Before the controversy of the American publication of Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov cuts a different figure at this 1958 Books and Authors Luncheon.

"Like a stopped clock," the author Lewis Mumford asserts in this 1961 appearance at a Books and Authors Luncheon, he has been exactly right twice.  

"I'm not an author. I'm merely a victim" is the unwittingly prescient opening statement from Robert Moses at this 1952 Books and Authors Luncheon. 

Longtime New York Public Radio engineer Jim Stagnito, a.k.a. Stag, bid the station farewell last week.

Hungary's abortive 1956 revolution provides the subject for this talk given by the journalist and novelist James Michener at a 1957 New York Herald Tribune Books and Authors Luncheon. 

In this 1950 speech given at a Books and Authors Luncheon, W. Somerset Maugham lays out his surprisingly detailed plan for a foreign academy to promote the growth of American literature.

On November 12, 1967, in observance of the 50th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, the Overseas Press Club invites three distinguished speakers to reflect on the momentous event. 

The Archives Department celebrates the life of artist Will Barnet with this WNYC interview from 1972, precisely 40 years ago today. Last year, at the age of 100, Barnet had a widely acclaimed retrospective at the National Academy.  The show highlighted a long and prolific career for an artist whose worked spanned - and survived - every important artistic movement in the 20th century.  Barnet passed away yesterday.

David Durk, the New York police detective who teamed up with officer Frank Serpico to breach the aptly named 'blue wall of silence' died yesterday. His testimony before the Knapp Commission investigation into police corruption in 1971 made for some of the most moving public testimony ever broadcast.  Writing in The New York Times Book Review, WNYC Director Mary Perot Nichols said it was largely thanks to Durk's persistence and contacts that their campaign against police corruption became a matter of public record. Above is an excerpt from his remarks on December 21, 1971.

Ferdinand Marcos, the newly elected president of the Philippines, and his wife, Imelda, are welcomed to New York by Mayor John  Lindsay in a ceremony at City Hall. 

In 1989 National Public Radio commissioned me to produce a Veterans Day documentary piece on General Smedley Butler, the consummate American soldier.

Everything But Money is both the title of Sam Levenson's autobiography and the theme in this 1966 appearance at a Books and Authors Luncheon.