These two 1947 broadcasts mark the start and finish of the Friendship Food Train's U.S. journey, a project conceived to help the people of Europe get through the winter. 

Herman Wouk, appearing in this 1955  Books and Authors Luncheon, contests what he perceives as the common view of his being "a conformist." 

Though it is already two decades after the start of World War II, the shadow of Nazi Germany still looms large over this 1960 talk given by journalist and historian William L. Shirer at a Books and Authors Luncheon. 

Calling himself a "Broadway wise-cracker and a Hollywood hack," Robert Sherwood, author, soldier, pacifist, and speechwriter, gives a stirring account of his wartime work for the Roosevelt administration at this 1948 Books and Authors Luncheon.

First: a perfect moment. On day 86 of a 3-month trek to and from the South Pole, adventurer Aleksander Gamme discovered something he'd stashed under the ice at the start of his trip. He wasn't expecting such a rush of happiness in that cold, hungry ...

Historian Richard Lingeman examines the years between VJ Day and the beginning of the Korean War, describing how we went from hot war to Cold War, and from there to here. The Noir Forties is a reexamination of America’s postwar period, and it traces the attitudes, sentiments, hopes and fears, prejudices, behavior, and collective dreams and nightmares of the times.

Susanna Moore talks about her new novel, The Life of Objects. It’s about a 17-year-old Irish woman who joins the Berlin household of Felix and Dorothea Metzenburg. Art collectors, and friends to the most fascinating men and women in Europe, the Metzenburgs introduce Beatrice to a world in which she finds more to desire than she ever imagined. But the threat of Nazi terror, the deportation and murder of Jews, and the hordes of refugees fleeing the advancing Red Army cast a dark shadow.

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.

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.

Thomas Ricks discusses the decline of American military leadership from World War II to Iraq. History has been kind to the American generals of World War II—Marshall, Eisenhower, Patton, and Bradley—and less kind to the generals of the wars that followed. He looks at why in his new book The Generals: American Military Command from World War II to Today.

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. 

Sönke Neitzel, Professor of International History, London School of Economics, discusses his investigations into the mind-set of the German fighting man during World War II. Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing, and Dying, written with social psychologist Harald Welzer, is based on declassified transcripts of covert recordings taken within the confines of the holding cells, bedrooms, and camps that housed the German POWs, providing a view of the mentality of the soldiers in the Wehrmacht, the Luftwaffe, the German navy.

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.

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. 

Celebrating the appearance of his first published novel, Pomp and Circumstance (1961), Noël Coward coolly rebuts those critics calling him "antiquated, snobbish, and belonging to an earlier, more complacent age." 

In early August of 1945, Tsutomu Yamaguchi had a run of the worst luck imaginable. A double blast of radiation left his future, and the future of his descendants, in doubt. In this short: an utterly amazing survival story that spans ... well, 4 billion years when you get down to it.

Arthur Herman tells how American businessmen—automobile magnate William Knudsen and shipbuilder Henry J. Kaiser—helped mobilize the “arsenal of democracy” that propelled the Allies to victory in World War II. Freedom’s Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in World War II tells how Knudsen and Kaiser helped transformed America into an economic and military superpower.

Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright discusses the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia—the country where she was born—and the events of World War II that shook her life before she turned twelve. Her memoir Prague Winter: A Personal Story of Remembrance and War: 1937–1948 draws on the memories of her and her family, her parents' written reflections, interviews, and newly available documents to give an account of the most tumultuous 12 years in modern history.

Andrew Nagorski discusses Hitler’s rise to power and Nazi Germany as seen through the eyes of Americans—diplomats, military, expats, visiting authors, Olympic athletes—who lived and worked there and watched it happen. Hitlerland: American Eyewitnesses to the Nazi Rise to Power offers surprising twists and a fresh perspective on this era.