The Library of Congress has a new curated web presentation—“Food for Thought: Presidents, Prime Ministers, and other National Press Club Luncheon Speakers, 1954-1989” (loc.gov/rr/record/pressclub/)—that features speeches by some of the world’s most important newsmakers, including presidents, international leaders and other political and cultural icons of the period. Most of these select speeches from the Library’s National Press Club Collection have not been heard in their entirety since they were initially delivered.  The online presentation spans 35 years and accompanying essays put relevant historical context around the topics discussed by the speakers.  
Researchers and students visiting the Recorded Sound Research Center can listen to any of the hundreds of speeches, but this collection is a selection of talks by some of the most distinguished speakers.  This online presentation "has great potential for use in the classroom because audio has the ability to convey experience and ideas more powerfully than the written word. It can grab a student’s attention due to its power to establish an experiential connection between listener and speaker.”
  The selections to the online presentation are part of a trove of nearly 2,000 historic sound recordings in the National Press Club Collection.  The selected speakers include:

  • Muhammad Ali and Ken Norton, Aug. 27, 1976
• James Baldwin, Dec. 10, 1986
• Menachem Begin, March 23, 1978
• Leonard Bernstein, Oct. 13, 1959
• James H. Billington, Jan. 12, 1989
• George H. W. Bush, March 20, 1981
• Jimmy Carter, Oct. 14, 1980
• Fidel Castro, April 20, 1959
• Charles de Gaulle, April 23, 1960
• Dwight D. Eisenhower, Jan. 14, 1959
• Gerald R. Ford, June 6, 1988
• Audrey Hepburn, April 7, 1989
• Alfred Hitchcock, March 14, 1963
• Herbert Hoover, March 10, 1954
• Bob Hope, July 8, 1980
• Nikita Khrushchev, Sept. 16, 1959
• Edward R. Murrow, May 24, 1961
• Richard M. Nixon, May 21, 1958
• A. Philip Randolph, Aug. 26, 1963
• Ronald Reagan, June 16, 1966
• Anwar Sadat, Feb. 6, 1978
• Jonas Salk, April 12, 1965
• Adlai E. Stevenson, June 26, 1961
• Margaret Thatcher, Sept. 19, 1975
• Harry S. Truman, May 10, 1954, April 12, 1958, Dec. 8, 1958, Nov. 2, 1961


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