Lily Koppel

Think "Mad Men" in space, or "Real Housewives" meets NASA—a new ABC show called "The Astronaut Wives Club" follows the spouses of astronauts in the 1960s.

As America's Mercury Seven astronauts went into space, the media focused on their brave young wives, and overnight they were transformed from military spouses into American royalty.

New York Times writer Lily Koppel happened to discover a discarded diary in a dumpster on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in 2004. The Red Leather Diary: Reclaiming a Life through the Pages of a Lost Journal weaves original diary entries and interviews with the diary's 90-year-old owner ...