When James K. Polk, the one-term president from Columbia, Tennessee, took the Oath of Office, the United States was an Atlantic power beset by the British to the north and Spanish and French interests to the south; by the time he left, the country had secured its dominance over North America and set in motion the economic boom that would drive it to global preeminence in the next century. Yet for all the importance of the Polk Administration, the man himself presents historians with a problem: How do you write a compelling narrative about one of America’s all-time boring politicians? In his new book, A Country of Vast Designs: James K. Polk, the Mexican War, and the Conquest of the American Continent, journalist Robert W. Merry gives it a shot.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks follows two principle story lines—one the biography of a virtually unknown, uneducated woman who died of cervical cancer in 1951; the other a scientific account of her still-living cells. Commonly known in biology circles as HeLa, these cells and the research they allow have directly affected much of the human race, yet their source remained a mystery even to most researchers. For decades not even the children of Henrietta Lacks knew their mother lived on in thousands of labs around the world, and in medicines and treatments that have saved countless lives. Rebecca Skloot‘s masterful new book has changed all that.

MTSU English professor Jid Lee remembers a Korean childhood marked by violence and despair. Urged to cultivate a warrior spirit but also to accept without question the patriarchy of her culture, Lee was trapped: “I felt I was in a tiger’s stomach. I wanted to get out.” To Kill a Tiger: A Memoir of Korea is the story of her release.