Overcoming learning disabilities, substance abuse, and the violence associated with a father in the mob, Greg Myerson, a lifelong sport-fisherman, caught an 82-pound striped bass in 2011, shattering a world record that had stood for 29 years. Without any training in biological research, he began studying the striped bass like a scientist, which led to the creation of the RattleSinker, the lure that helped him catch the record-setting bass. During an appearance on the TV show "Shark Tank," Mark Cuban bought a 33 percent share of Greg's company, World Record Striper Company. Yet at the very instant he achieved his crowning glory as a striped bass fisherman, he had a staggering epiphany and instantly regretted killing the fish.

Caddyshack is one of the most beloved comedies of all time, a classic snobs vs. slobs story of working class kids and the white collar buffoons who make them haul their golf bags in the hot summer sun. It has sex, drugs and one very memorable candy bar, but the movie we all know and love didn’t start out that way. In CADDYSHACK: The Making of a Hollywood Cinderella Story, Chris Nashawaty goes behind the scenes of the iconic film, chronicling the rise of comedy’s greatest deranged minds as they form The National Lampoon, turn the entertainment industry on its head, and ultimately blow up both a golf course and popular culture as we know it.

Conceived as the most modern, humane incarceration facility the world had ever seen, New York’s Blackwell’s Island, site of a lunatic asylum, two prisons, an almshouse and a number of hospitals, quickly became, in the words of a visiting Charles Dickens, "a lounging, listless madhouse." Digging through city records, newspaper articles and archival reports, Stacy Horn tells a gripping narrative through the voices of the island’s inhabitants. We also hear from the era’s officials, reformers and journalists, including the celebrated undercover reporter Nellie Bly. DAMNATION ISLAND shows how far we’ve come in caring for the least fortunate among us --- and reminds us how much work still remains.

In Wild Thyme, Pennsylvania, summer has brought Officer Henry Farrell nothing but trouble. Heroin has arrived with a surge in burglaries and other crime. When local carpenter Kevin O’Keeffe admits that he shot a man and that his girlfriend, Penny, is missing, the search leads the small-town cop to an industrial vice district across state lines that has already ensnared more than one of his neighbors. With the patience of a hunter, Farrell ventures into a world of shadow beyond the fields and forests of home.

In the early hours of January 31, 1968, the North Vietnamese launched over a hundred attacks across South Vietnam in what would become known as the Tet Offensive. The lynchpin of Tet was the capture of Hue, Vietnam’s intellectual and cultural capital, by 10,000 National Liberation Front troops who descended from hidden camps and surged across the city of 140,000. Within hours, the entire city was in their hands save for two small military outposts. After several futile and deadly days, Lieutenant Colonel Ernie Cheatham would finally come up with a strategy to retake the city. With unprecedented access to war archives in the U.S. and Vietnam and interviews with participants from both sides, Mark Bowden narrates each stage of this crucial battle through multiple viewpoints.

THE LAST COWBOYS is Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter John Branch’s epic tale of one American family struggling to hold on to the fading vestiges of the Old West. For generations, the Wrights of southern Utah have raised cattle and world-champion saddle-bronc riders --- many call them the most successful rodeo family in history. Now they find themselves fighting to save their land and livelihood as the West is transformed by urbanization, battered by drought and rearranged by public-land disputes. Could rodeo, of all things, be the answer?

STAR OF THE NORTH opens in 1988, when a Korean American teenager is kidnapped from a South Korean beach by North Korean operatives. Twenty-two years later, her brilliant twin sister, Jenna, is still searching for her and ends up on the radar of the CIA. When evidence that her sister may still be alive in North Korea comes to light, Jenna will do anything possible to rescue her. Her story is braided together with two other narrative threads. In one, a North Korean peasant woman finds a forbidden international aid balloon and uses the valuables inside to launch a dangerously lucrative black-market business. In the other, a high-ranking North Korean official discovers that he may be descended from a traitor, a fact that could mean his death if it is revealed.

When the Unknown Soldier was laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery in 1921, eight of America’s most decorated, battle-hardened WWI veterans served as Body Bearers for the casket. For the first time, celebrated military historian and bestselling author Patrick K. O’Donnell recounts their heroics on the battlefield a century ago. The Body Bearers included a cowboy who relived the Charge of the Light Brigade, a Native American who heroically captured 63 German prisoners single-handedly, and a salty New Englander who dueled a U-boat for hours in a fierce gunfight. Their stories reveal the larger narrative of America’s involvement in the conflict, transporting readers into the midst of events and battles during 1917-1918 that ultimately decided the Great War.

With this collection of original essays, venerated journalist Dan Rather reminds us of the principles upon which the United States was founded. Looking at the freedoms that define us --- from the vote to the press; the values that have transformed us, from empathy to inclusion to service; the institutions that sustain us, such as public education; and the traits that helped form our young country, such as the audacity to take on daunting challenges in science and medicine --- Rather brings to bear his decades of experience on the frontlines of the world’s biggest stories. As a living witness to historical change, he offers up an intimate view of history, tracing where we have been in order to help us chart a way forward and heal our bitter divisions.