National Press Club

National Press Club member Paul Dickson spoke about his new book, Bill Veeck: Baseball’s Greatest Maverick, to a very appreciative audience at the Press Club on April 24. Like Veeck, he is doing everything he can with his clothes on to sell the book, Dickson said.

This is Dickson's first biography and writing it was very different from other types of books because getting too far into the person can destroy the person, he said. Veeck is a fascinating person and Dickson had to deconstruct him to write about him, he added.

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Bob Woodward, the Washington Post investigative reporter and editor whose work on the Watergate scandal led to the resignation of an American president, has been selected as the 2012 recipient of the Fourth Estate Award, the National Press Club’s most-honored prize.

Woodward will receive the award at a gala dinner Friday, Sept. 21. He is the 40th recipient of the Fourth Estate Award, which recognizes a journalist who has made significant contributions to the field through a lifetime of excellence.

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Interior Secretary Ken Salazar defended the Obama administration's energy policy at a National Press Club luncheon April 24, insisting that it has an "all of the above" approach to energy development that is the best way to increase the nation's energy security.

Salazar cited the need for oil, gas, nuclear, solar, biofuel, wind, geothermal and other energy sources as necessary to reduce imports and lessen the impact of the kinds of oil-price shocks the country has experienced since the 1970s.

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Actor-activist Alec Baldwin, famously candid and notoriously outspoken, was relatively serious and subdued at his National Press Club luncheon appearance April 16, as he discussed his own cultural growth and stressed the importance of more federal funding for the arts — even in the current struggling economy.

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The prolific and popular writer Alexander McCall Smith kept a ballroom audience chuckling and laughing out loud Saturday as he made a case for novels that don’t focus on social problems.

McCall Smith is touring the United States promoting and signing “The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection,” the 13th in the series focused on Precious Ramotswe, “the kindest and best detective in Botswana,” as the dust jacket says.

He’s also promoting a children’s book: “The Great Cake Mystery: Precious Ramotswe’s Very First Case.”

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Photographer Tom Gundelfinger O’Neal provided a guided tour of the 1960s and 1970s rock and roll scene on April 11, as photo buffs and music fans gathered for a reception and program marking the opening of his month-long photo exhibit at the National Press Club.

O’Neal was a young fine arts graduate searching for direction in the late 1960s when he had an “epiphany” at a record store in Carmel, Calif., as he gazed at the Mamas and Papas “Deliver” album cover.

"I decided I am going to be a photographer and photograph rock and roll bands,” he said.

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Joshua Meyer, a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist formerly with the Los Angeles Times, took a rapt National Press Club audience into the classified world of counterterrorism, espionage, and U.S. government attempts to capture the most dangerous man in the world at an April 11 book rap.

In "The Hunt for KSM, Inside the Pursuit and Takedown of The Real 911 Mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed," Meyer details the dogged pursuit of two agents who chased the terrorist from five years before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks until his 2003 arrest.

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The historic labor agreement signed late last year by Major League Baseball and its union, the Major League Baseball Players Association, is a model for collective bargaining during a time of economic stress, MLBPA Executive Director Michael Weiner said at a National Press Club luncheon April 11.

The five-year pact -- a change of pace from the bargaining strife and work stoppages that dominated much of the last century -- guarantees uninterrupted play of the national pastime through the 2016 season.

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IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman urged lawmakers to address a series of tax cuts that have either expired or are expiring in order to sidestep what some D.C. insiders call “Taxmageddon.”

“Unfortunately, Congress has gotten into the habit of passing tax legislation very late,” Shulman said during a luncheon Thursday at the National Press Club. “If Congress can’t act by the end of the year … you could have a real disaster in the filing season.”

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The most fundamental fact of existence is not the universe nor even space, time or gravity, but that we are of aware of the universe, Deepak Chopra, author or co-author of over 60 books on spirituality and mind-body connections, told a National Press Club luncheon audience Wednesday.

“When you come into this world, you come with awareness,” Chopra, a physician, said.

Expanding that awareness is the theme of Chopra's latest book, Spiritual Solutions.

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