Few writers begin their appearance at The Herald Tribune's prestigious Books and Authors Luncheon series by doing a striptease, but Gypsy Rose Lee feels it is expected of her. 

Nine months after his brother's death, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy enters the New York Senate race, appearing before the media to announce that "I have decided to make myself available for the nomination."

Starting Out in the Thirties (1965), the second installment of Kazin's New Yorker Trilogy, had just been published when he gave this brief talk on the genesis of his artistic motivation at a 1965 Books and Authors Luncheon.

"I feel like an impostor," the author and teacher Bel Kaufman confesses in this talk given at the Overseas Press Club in 1966, where the topics include her accent, poetry, and the classroom.

Garson Kanin's memoir of W. Somerset Maugham is the subject of his appearance at this 1967 Books and Authors Luncheon.

Herman Kahn addresses the members of the Overseas Press Club about "The Likelihood of Nuclear War at Some Point in the 20th Century," proclaiming the outlook is safer and calmer than five years before.

Jane Jacobs, in this 1962 appearance at a Books and Authors Luncheon, explains her current role as a community leader in the fight against what she views as the excesses and excrescences of the arrogant Modernist redesign of city neighborhoods.

Kee Malesky, NPR’s longest-serving librarian, was in New York on October 15 for a talk and an afternoon “salon”. Sponsored by METRO, she was promoting her recently-published, second book, Learn Something New Every Day.

“I guarantee, that if I am elected, I will take over the White House, hang out, shoot pool, scratch my ass, and not do a damn thing.  Which is to say, if you want something done, don't come to me to do it for you; you got to get together and figure out how to do it yourselves.  Is that a deal?” - Utah Phillips

"Never blame a legislative body for not doing something. When they do nothing, that don't hurt anybody. When they do something is when they become dangerous." - Will Rogers

Largely forgotten today, Fannie Hurst was for many years one of the most highly paid and widely read novelists of her time. Anatomy of Me is Hurst's just-published autobiography, which she discusses at this 1958 Books and Authors Luncheon.

On March 5, 1853 a German piano maker named Henry Steinway (né Steinweg) founded Steinway & Sons at 85 Varick Street in New York City, barely five blocks from the present-day WNYC studios. Less than three months later another, much younger German piano maker named Helmuth Kranich would arrive at these shores. Little did he suspect that one of his children would someday work at a competing form of entertainment: radio, specifically WNYC.

A.E. Hotchner, a friend of Ernest Hemingway during the last 14 years of the writer's life, reminisces about their relationship in this Books and Authors Luncheon appearance promoting his memoir, Papa Hemingway (1966). 

Chaos rules at this rowdy 1964 meeting of the Overseas Press Club. The guest panel includes Catholic Church critic, Rolf Hochhuth, and a Catholic Church official. 

"New York City Mayors I Have Known" might be the better title for this 1954 installment of Campus Press Conference featuring guest Harry Hershfield -- columnist, cartoonist, and "Toastmaster Extraordinary."

David Halberstam briefs this 1964 meeting of the Overseas Press Club on what he sees as a "sharp conflict" between America's official optimism and the reality experienced by reporters embedded in Vietnam.

Formerly a foreign war correspondent, Chicagoan John Gunther drew on his background to write the 'Inside' travel series, which included Inside Europe (1936), Inside Asia (1939), Inside Latin America (1941), and here, Inside Africa.

"The Actor and Clichés In the Theater," is the subject Sir Alec Guinness chooses for this impromptu 1964 performance before the Overseas Press Club. 

In May 1965, the Overseas Press Club hosted the German novelist Günter Grass, who had arrived in New York to teach a seminar at Columbia University. 

In this 1974 episode of Musicale, Hubert S. Howe, Jr., selects a few original electronic music compositions synthesized at Queens College. Howe was one of the earliest progenitors of computer music.

This WNYC American Music Festival program from February 19, 1941 captures the Benny Goodman Sextet in a rare and wonderful moment.