On his 81st birthday, without explanation, Karen Fisher-Alaniz's father gave her two notebooks. Inside were letters he'd written during World War II. The more she read, the more she discovered about the man and the secret role he played in the war. Host Audie Cornish talks with Fisher-Alaniz and her father about her book, Breaking the Code.

It's hard to remember now, but MTV did once play music videos all day. A new oral history recalls that golden age, and the network's meteoric rise to the top of the music industry.

When Jerusalem fell in 70 A.D., hundreds of Jews journeyed through the desert to a place called Masada. They called it home until the Romans came and a bloody battle left behind only a few survivors. Alice Hoffman tells her own version of the story in her new novel, The Dovekeepers.

David Rowell's debut novel puts public and personal timelines alongside each other as he recounts June 8, 1968. That's the day a train made a slow, momentous journey from New York to Washington, D.C., to deliver the body of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy for burial beside his slain brother.

Jerry West is literally the symbol of the National Basketball Association; his silhouette is the NBA's logo. Host Scott Simon talks to the former player about his life both on and off the court, documented in his new memoir, West by West: My Charmed, Tormented Life.

Biographer Robert Massie explains how Catherine II read books to escape the misery of her unhappy marriage. When she became empress in 1762, she championed the ideals of the French Enlightenment during her 34-year reign over Russia.