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The historic heat began blasting the Southwestern U.S. in June, stretching from Texas across New Mexico and Arizona and into California's desert.

In the early 1960s, psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted a controversial study in which participants were led to believe they were administering painful, high-voltage shocks to other subjects. Gina Perry, author of Behind the Shock Machine, says the study has "taken on a life of its own."

New York Times Magazine reporter Mark Leibovich's new book This Town is a lively look at media, politics and money in Washington. Leibovich tells NPR that most people outside don't understand what a carnival of money and celebrity the city has become.

Spanish novelist Javier Marías is well-known in Europe, but not as popular in the United States. Critic John Powers says Marías' latest work — an unsettling, slightly sinister twist on the mystery novel — ought to raise the author's profile here in America.

In 1963 Betty Friedan published a groundbreaking work that empowered a generation of women. With World War II over, women who had been working were told to find fulfillment at home. "The moment was so pregnant and ready for an explosion," says New York Times columnist Gail Collins.

Videos and photos provide some clues, but much remains unknown about the horrific explosion at the site.

TV favors the young — but Betty White only got more famous as she got older. White's career began in the earliest days of television, and she was active until her death at the age of 99.

Author Lucy Lethbridge explores the history of British servants through their diaries, letters and memoirs. She says, "What I found particularly fascinating was how ... butlers were so butlery"; the old caricature of the clever manservant and the silly master is one "butlers have appeared to play to the hilt."

Calls for Harvard and MIT presidents to step down remain firm while a growing number of students and faculty are coming out in support of their school leaders.

A strike on the Syrian capital destroyed a building used by the Iranian paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, Syrian and Iranian state media reported. One of those killed was a local Hezbollah commander