“By general agreement,” began an article in the April 14, 1961, issue of Time magazine, “Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson can outtalk any other ten Texans with one tongue tied behind his cheek.” For proof, look no further than the Presidential Recordings Program. Some of the nearly five thousand hours of tapes secretly recorded by Franklin D. Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon are available online, thanks to the ongoing efforts of the University of Virginia’s Miller Center of Public Affairs. There are audio files of national importance—Kennedy and Robert McNamara discussing Vietnam, a phone call from Roosevelt about the prospect of war with Japan—supplemented with transcriptions, as well as recordings of day-to-day conversations, including a cringe-inducing call in which L.B.J. orders new slacks.

Google Street View is the perfect tool for the nostalgic voyeur. Want to see your old apartment? How about your college dorm, or an ex’s front door? Arcade Fire and the director Chris Milk—whose past collaborators include Kanye West, U2, and Green Day—have partnered to make these virtual flashbacks as emotionally fraught as possible with the interactive video for the song “We Used to Wait,” from the band’s new album, “The Suburbs.” The project, titled “The Wilderness Downtown,” asks for the address of your childhood home; the multi-panel HTML5 video features aerial shots of the location, as well as a tool that lets you write a postcard to your younger, less enlightened self. (The site is best viewed in Google Chrome.)

The critics: Sifton on Il Matto, Sietsema on Testaccio

Today's drinking event: Founders Nemesis Release

The characters in Suzanne Rivecca’s fictions are sharp-tongued, deviously funny, wounded, privileged, destitute, and sometimes remarkably bored—but never boring. The eight stories in Rivecca’s début collection, “Death Is Not an Option,” introduce us to (among others) a burgeoning atheist in her final year of Catholic school, a mental-health help-line receptionist, a youngish woman whose sexual history scares away suitors, and a semi-blocked writer. These people find themselves not at a crossroads but at the collision of private and public life that will define them for years to come. With fresh, honest prose, Rivecca frames the crucial moments of her characters’ lives, in each story showing the reader only exactly what is needed.

The past few months, we’ve been faithfully pursuing summer fare: berries from the farmers’ markets eaten plain or in smoothies, vegetables lightly sautéed in olive oil and garlic, seared seafood, local cheeses, and salads made from simple ingredients with the emphasis always on ...

As with other great food cities—Paris, say, or Hong Kong—Rome's most profound gastronomic triumphs often lie buried, like ancient ruins, beneath a welter of dishes imported from other regions of the country, and other parts of the world. Sure you can get great pizza, pesto, caponata, ...

Sometimes it seems like there's nothing new to say about pizza—for all the distinctions that can be drawn, that tired cliché about pizza and sex is true: Even when it's bad, it's still pretty good. But clearly there's something about the elemental appeal of bread, tomato, and sauce t...

The Feed first look: Blue Ribbon's R Lounge in Times Square

Pre-Labor Day nose-to-tail pig feast at Chestnut Grove

Richard Thompson has been plying his trade as a literate folk-rock songwriter for four decades now; his new album, “Dream Attic,” finds him working in the same vein, but with a few notable differences. Though the songs on “Dream Attic” are all new, the album was recorded in front of a live audience in San Francisco, and the live setting gives Thompson a jolt of energy: Ben Greenman writes in the magazine this week that the approach benefits both satirical numbers like “The Money Shuffle” and “Here Comes Geordie” and more emotional songs like “A Brother Slips Away.” “The songs are long, some more than seven minutes,” Greenman writes, “but that lets the musicians stretch out, including Thompson himself, who furnishes a number of fiery guitar solos.”

A nautical punch bar comes to Williamsburg

Today's drinking events: Champagne Tasting and the Brooklyn Slur

The three episodes of “The Red Riding Trilogy,” made for British television, were adapted by the screenwriter Tony Grisoni from a series of novels by David Peace that fictionalized a string of murders that occurred in Yorkshire between 1963 and 1980. David Denby wrote that the films cast “shadows of death everywhere” and adds that “a high degree of art and show-business savvy has been applied to the unspeakable. The expressiveness of even the minor actors, for instance, warms the bleak atmosphere.” He calls the trilogy “an exhausting, morbidly fascinating, and finally thrilling experience.”

paragraph class="noindent">The name Momofuku—as in David Chang’s epochal East Village restaurant—means “lucky peach” in Japanese. And Má Pêche means not “my peach” in French, as you might suppose, but “mother peach” in Vietnamese . . .

Today's eating event: Caribbean Street Food

Book now for the ultimate cheese-lover's getaway

Sunday's eating event: Foraging with Steve Brill

Today's drinking event: Famous Hotel Bars

Today's eating event: Burger Bash