Despite hour upon hour of repeated listening, some conversations simply defy transcription. Perhaps improvements in the technology of sound will some day allow them all to be reconstituted; in the meantime, here are passages that seemed too intriguing to omit.

One day in late September, FDR was closeted with several aides evidently going over a list of requests for federal posts made by party leaders across the country.

First up is Frank Hague, the notorious boss of Jersey City, with whom Roosevelt had forged an arm’s-length alliance for the duration of the campaign. Hague’s nominee is so crooked, one aide says, that Hague himself has just called to say “he’s unfit, but he says he’s also got to write you… that he’s all right. But he doesn’t mean it.” FDR laughs, then roars: “Very simple, send him a letter saying we cannot appoint ____ [banging his desk]. Give me another name !”

Another nominee from Oklahoma is perhaps better qualified but, FDR says, “He’s the fella that raped the girl in his office and paid $3,000 [to get off], and [chuckling] he’s led a clean life, so far as we know, ever since!” He doesn’t get a job, either.

With the election approaching and Willkie making inroads into the black vote, Roosevelt met on September 27 with three civil rights leaders to discuss the difficult question of integrating the armed forces. Present were A. Philip Randolph of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, Walter White, head of the NAACP, and T. Arnold Hill, acting secretary of the Urban League, as well as Navy Secretary Frank Knox and Robert P. Patterson, the Assistant Secretary of War. In the recorded portion of their discussion, Randolph’s enormous voice and orotund delivery come close to matching even FDR’s.

RANDOLPH : With all due respect, Mr. President, I thought I might say on the part of the Negro people, they feel they are not wanted in the armed forces of the country, and they feel they have earned their right to participate in every phase of the government by virtue of their record in past wars since the Revolution…. They are feeling that they are being shunted about… that they are not wanted now.

FDR : Of course, the main point to get across is… that we are not… [as we did] in the World War, confining the Negro to the noncombat services. We’re putting them right in, proportionately, into the combat services….

RANDOLPH : We feel that’s fine.

FDR :… Which is, something …. The thing is, we’ve got to work into this…. Now, suppose you have a Negro regiment… here , and right over here on my right in line, would be a white regiment…. Now what happens after a while, in case of