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Sherpa JAMLING TENSING NORGAY. Author of the new book Touching My Father's Soul, Norgay was Climbing Leader for the 1996 Everest IMAX Filming Expedition and summitted the Mountain that year. He's also the son of Tenzing Norgay, one of the first men in history to summit Mt. Everest. In his book, Jamling Norgay recounts his 1996 Mt. Everest ascent: the climb and its familial meaning. He now heads Tenzing Norgay Adventures which is based in India.

When a brutal regime ends, those who survive are often left with feelings of guilt, anger and confusion. With the fall of Saddam Hussein, a group of Iraqi-born activists have created the Iraq Memory Foundation to help Iraqis come to terms with their past.

The Museum of American History's new permanent exhibition, "The Price of Freedom," features personal artifacts from 16 conflicts involving U.S. troops. Hear NPR's Scott Simon, Vietnam Medal of Honor recipient Al Rascon and curator David Allison.

This week in 1814, the poet George Gordon, Lord Byron, made publishing history. His poem "The Corsair" sold out its entire first run, all 10,000 copies, in London in one day. "The Corsair" is the tale of a pirate captain willing to risk the love of his life to save a slave in a Turkish harem. Steven Jones, a Byron scholar who teaches at Chicago's Loyola University, discusses the great work.

When Space Shuttle Columbia's mission ended in tragedy, a piece of history was rediscovered. An Israeli astronaut on Columbia had taken a drawing into space, a view of Earth, as seen from the moon. The scene was imagined by a teenager who didn't live to see the moon landings. The young artist was Petr Ginz, who died in a Nazi concentration camp. Since the Columbia disaster, the boy's wartime diaries resurfaced, and they've now been published in the Czech Republic. Katerina Zachovalova reports.

George Crile is a veteran producer for CBS's 60 Minutes and 60 Minutes II. He's the author of the new book, Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History. It's about the CIA's secret war in Afghanistan in the 1970s and 1980s, and its support of the Afghan Mujahideen against the Soviet Union. Ammunitions and weapons were smuggled across the border and at one point over 300,000 fundamentalist Afghan warriors carried weapons provided by the CIA. Charlie Wilson was a congressman from East Texas, who sat on the House Appropriations Committee. Along with Gust Avrakotos, a CIA operative, they armed the Mujahideen.

We remember historian Stephen Ambrose who died Sunday at the age of 66. A college professor, Ambrose became a best-selling author late in life with his book D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II. He wrote several military history volumes including Citizen Soldiers. He was consultant for the film Saving Private Ryan and his book Band of Brothers was the basis of the 2001 HBO mini-series. Ambrose also wrote Undaunted Courage about the Lewis and Clark exploration to the West. This interview first aired Aug. 15, 2001.

At a time of year defined by buying and exchanging presents, favorites both old and new demand attention. Among the recommendations from book critic Maureen Corrigan: the novels The Ice Harvest by Scott Phillips and The History of Love by Nicole Krauss.

Author Michael Pollan explores the evolutionary reasons behind why we've learned to cook with fire in his book The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. Pollan says that grilling outdoors is one of the highest honors we can bestow on a guest.

Her latest book, Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas, is just out in paperback. It's about a religious text that is little known -- the secret Gospel of Thomas, rediscovered in Egypt in 1945. She will explain why it was suppressed by the church and kept out of the canon. Pagels has been called one of the world's most important writers and thinkers on religion and history. She won the National Book Award for her book, The Gnostic Gospels. Pagels is a professor at Princeton University. (Original airdate: June 4, 2003)