The advent of table-top femtosecond lasers has opened the way to efficient generation and detection of terahertz radiation, which is attractive for a wide range of applications. We give an overview of recent efforts to improve the most promising generation and detection techniques based on nonlinear optical-to-terahertz conversion in electro-optic crystals and propose new schemes for record efficient terahertz generation and detection. In particular, we develop new regimes of terahertz generation via optical rectification of tens-of-mJ-level Ti:sapphire laser pulses with tilted intensity front in a lithium niobate crystal, the technique that provides peak terahertz fields exceeding 1 MV/cm. In other promising scheme, where pump laser pulse propagates in a thin layer of lithium niobate attached to a silicon prism, a record conversion efficiency of 0.25% was experimentally achieved for mJ-level laser pumping. For terahertz detection, we propose an intensity sensitive electro-optic sampling technique, which does not require complex and expensive polarization optics.