Biography and Memoir

Discover the stories of their lives, in recent biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs.
Updated May 9, 2024
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Making It So A Memoir
Stewart, Patrick A.
THE NEW YORK TIMES AND USA TODAY BESTSELLER The long-awaited memoir from iconic, beloved actor and living legend Sir Patrick Stewart! From his acclaimed stage triumphs to his legendary onscreen work in the Star Trek and X-Men franchises, Sir...
Elon Musk
Isaacson, Walter.
#1 New York Times bestseller From the author of Steve Jobs and other bestselling biographies, this is the astonishingly intimate story of the most fascinating and controversial innovator of our era--a rule-breaking visionary who helped to lead the world into the era of...
Woman in Me
Spears, Britney
Named a Best Book of the Year by Elle, The Washington Post, Rolling Stone, NPR, Financial Times, Vanity Fair, and more! "In Britney Spears's memoir, she's stronger than ever." --The New York Times Over 2 million...
My Name Is Barbra
Streisand, Barbra.
The long-awaited memoir by the superstar of stage, screen, recordings, and television Barbra Streisand is by any account a living legend, a woman who in a career spanning six decades has excelled in every area of entertainment. She is among the handful of EGOT winners (Emmy,...
HOW TO SAY BABYLON A MEMOIR
SINCLAIR, SAFIYA.
National Book Critics Circle Award Winner A New York Times Notable Book A Read with Jenna Today Show Book Club Pick! A Best Book of 2023 by the New York Times, Time, The Washington Post, Vulture, Shelf Awareness<...
NOT YOUR CHINA DOLL THE WILD AND SHIMMERING LIFE OF ANNA MAY WONG
SALISBURY, KATIE GEE.
Before Constance Wu, Sandra Oh, Awkwafina, or Lucy Liu, there was Anna May Wong. In her time, she was a glamorous starlet, flapper, and fashion icon who graced Oscar-winning films and who was mobbed by clamoring fans and the adoring press both here and abroad. Anna May Wong was plucked from her...
My Side of the River A Memoir
Gutierrez, Elizabeth Camarillo
A New York Times Editor's PickA People Magazine Best Book to Read in February A Goodreads Most Anticipated Book of 2024 "My Side of the River is both fierce and poetic. It brilliantly reframes border writing while embracing nature and...
Enough
Hutchinson, Cassidy
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Cassidy Hutchinson's desk was mere steps from the most controversial president in recent American history. Now, she provides a riveting account of her extraordinary experiences as an idealistic young woman thrust into the middle of a national...
Medgar and Myrlie Medgar Evers and the Love Story That Awakened America
Reid, Joy-Ann Lomena
#1 New York Times Bestseller "Medgar Evers deserves a place alongside Malcolm X and Dr. King in our historical memory. Evers, with Myrlie as his partner in activism and in life, was doing civil rights work in the single most hostile and dangerous environment in America."--from Medgar...
LONGSTREET THE CONFEDERATE GENERAL WHO DEFIED THE SOUTH
VARON, ELIZABETH R.
Finalist, Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography American Battlefield Trust Prize for History Finalist A "compelling portrait" (Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize­-winning author) of the controversial Confederate general who later embraced Reconstruction and...
Sharing Too Much Musings from an Unlikely Life
Evans, Richard Paul
The #1 New York Times bestselling author and "king of Christmas fiction" (The New York Times) delivers a charming and inspirational collection of personal essays. Before he was the #1 New York Times bestselling author of holiday classics such as The...
Nine Lives and Counting A Bounty Hunter's Journey to Faith Hope and Redemption
Chapman, Duane
Go behind-the-scenes with Duane "Dog" Chapman, star of the hit reality show Dog the Bounty Hunter and two-time New York Times bestselling author, as he shares new stories about his faith in Jesus, family, and the discovery of God's grace at work throughout his life. From being in a...
Man of two faces a memoir a history a memorial
Nguyen, Viet Thanh
LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD The highly original, blistering, and unconventional memoir by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sympathizer, which has now sold over one million copies worldwide With insight, humor, formal invention, and lyricism,...
Country of the blind a memoir at the end of sight
Leland, Andrew.
We meet Andrew Leland as he's suspended in the liminal state of the soon-to-be blind: he's midway through his life with retinitis pigmentosa, a condition that ushers those who live with it from sightedness to blindness over years, even decades. He grew up with full vision, but starting in his...
ONLY SAY GOOD THINGS SURVIVING PLAYBOY AND FINDING MYSELF
HEFNER, CRYSTAL.
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A JANUARY 2024 APPLE BOOKS STAFF PICK AND AUDIBLE EDITORS SELECT NAMED A BEST BOOK TO READ THIS JANUARY BY THE GLOSS A raw and unflinching look at the objectification and misogyny of the Playboy mansion, a woman's stolen...
Shakespeare The Man Who Pays the Rent
Dench, Judi
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Taking a curtain call with a live snake in her wig... Cavorting naked through the Warwickshire countryside painted green... Acting opposite a child with a pumpkin on his head... These...
Sure i'll join your cult a memoir of mental illness and the quest to belong anywhere
Bamford, Maria
From "weird, scary, ingenious" (The New York Times) stand-up comedian Maria Bamford, an instant New York Times bestselling, brutally honest, and "laugh-out-loud funny" (Jennette McCurdy, #1 New York Times bestselling author) memoir about show business, mental health, and the...
World within a song music that changed my life and life that changed my music
Tweedy, Jeff
What makes us fall in love with a song? What makes us want to write our own songs? Do songs help? Do songs help us live better lives? And do the lives we live help us write better songs? After two New York Times bestsellers that cemented and expanded his legacy as one of America's best-loved...
Charlie Chaplin vs America When Art Sex and Politics Collided
Eyman, Scott
The "shocking" (The Wall Street Journal), must-read story of Charlie Chaplin's years of exile from the United States during the postwar Red Scare, and how it ruined his film career, from bestselling biographer Scott Eyman. Bestselling Hollywood biographer and film...
NECESSARY TROUBLE GROWING UP AT MIDCENTURY
FAUST, DREW GILPIN.
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A memoir of coming of age in a conservative Southern family in postwar America. To grow up in the 1950s was to enter a world of polarized national alliances, nuclear threat, and destabilized social hierarchies. Two...
Milton friedman the last conservative
Burns, Jennifer.
An Economist Best Book of 2023 | One of The New York Times' 33 Nonfiction Books to Read This Fall | Named a most anticipated fall book by the Chicago Tribune and Bloomberg "Wherever you sit on the political spectrum, there's a lot to learn from...
George Harrison The Reluctant Beatle
Norman, Philip.
From the premiere Beatles biographer--author of the New York Times bestseller John Lennon: The Life and Shout!: The Beatles in Their Generation--a rare and "absorbing biography" (Wall Street Journal) of George Harrison, the most misunderstood and mysterious Beatle,...
In the form of a question the joys and rewards of a curious life
Schneider, Amy.
"Warm and funny." --The New York Times * "Refreshingly no-holds-barred." --USA TODAY * "Delightful." --San Francisco Chronicle An inspirational, witty, and bold memoir from the most successful woman ever to compete on Jeopardy!--an exploration of...
Wandering through life a memoir
Leon, Donna
Theinternationally bestselling author of the Guido Brunetti mysteries tells herown adventurous life story as she enters her eighties In a series of vignettes full of affection, irony, and good humor, DonnaLeon narrates a remarkable life she feels has rather more...
UP HOME ONE GIRL'S JOURNEY
SIMMONS, RUTH.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER . "Simmons's evocative account of her remarkable trajectory from Jim Crow Texas, where she was the youngest of twelve children in a sharecropping family, to the presidencies of Smith College and Brown University shines with tenderness and dignity."-The New York...
Ian Fleming The Complete Man
Shakespeare, Nicholas
A fresh portrait of the man behind James Bond, and his enduring impact, by an award-winning biographer with unprecedented access to the Fleming family papers. Ian Fleming's greatest creation, James Bond, has had an enormous and ongoing impact on our culture. What Bond represents about...
PRESIDENT GARFIELD FROM RADICAL TO UNIFIER
GOODYEAR, C. W.
An "ambitious, thorough, supremely researched" (The Washington Post) biography of the extraordinary, tragic life of America's twentieth president--James Garfield. In "the most comprehensive Garfield biography in almost fifty years" (The Wall Street Journal),...
How not to be a politician a memoir
Stewart, Rory
Named a Best Book of 2023 by Financial Times and Kirkus Reviews The #1 Sunday Times bestseller, published in the UK as Politics on the Edge. "One of the best books on politics our era will see . . . A book of astonishing literary quality." --<...
BETTER LIVING THROUGH BIRDING NOTES FROM A BLACK MAN IN THE NATURAL WORLD
COOPER, CHRISTIAN.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER . Central Park birder Christian Cooper takes us beyond the viral video that shocked a nation and into a world of avian adventures, global excursions, and the unexpected lessons you can learn from a life spent looking up. "Wondrous . . ....
ON GREAT FIELDS THE LIFE AND UNLIKELY HEROISM OF JOSHUA LAWRENCE CHAMBERLAIN
WHITE, RONALD C.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER . From the author of A. Lincoln and American Ulysses comes the dramatic and definitive biography of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, the history-altering professor turned Civil War hero. "A vital and vivid portrait of an unlikely military hero who...
MYSTERIOUS CASE OF RUDOLF DIESEL GENIUS POWER AND DECEPTION ON THE EVE OF WORLD WAR I
BRUNT, DOUGLAS.
The hidden history of one of the world's greatest inventors, a man who disrupted the status quo and then disappeared into thin air on the eve of World War I--this book answers the hundred-year-old mystery of what really became of Rudolf Diesel. September 29, 1913: the steamship...
Everything I Learned I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant A Memoir
Chin, Curtis.
An American Library Association Stonewall Honor Book Most Anticipated This Fall in TIME, San Francisco Chronicle, The Washington Post, Goodreads, Lamba Literary Review, Kirkus Reviews, ...
When I Was Your Age Life Lessons Funny Stories & Questionable Parenting Advice from a Professi
Thompson, Kenan
When I Was Your Age is a hilarious, heartwarming and surprising ode to growing up, getting older and wiser, and luck, life, and learning from the school of hard knocks, from SNL's longest-serving actor, Kenan Thompson Kenan Thompson is Saturday Night Live's ...
Leslie F*cking Jones
Jones, Leslie.
WINNER OF THE 2024 AUDIE AWARD FOR HUMOR A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A BARNES AND NOBLE'S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR  A TOWN & COUNTRY BEST CELEBRITY MEMOIR OF 2023 A VULTURE BEST COMEDY BOOK OF 2023 ...
Father and son a memoir
Raban, Jonathan
A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR * A poignant memoir of love, trauma, and recovery after a life-changing stroke, twinned to a powerful account of his father's experience in World War II, by a winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. "A beautiful,...
Many lives of mama love a memoir of lying stealing writing and healing
Hardin, Lara Love
"Once you start reading, be prepared, because you won't want to stop." --Oprah Winfrey OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK * New York Times bestselling author Lara Love Hardin recounts her slide from soccer mom to opioid addict to jailhouse shot caller and her unlikely comeback as a...
WIFEDOM MRS ORWELL'S INVISIBLE LIFE
FUNDER, ANNA.
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR * WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION FINALIST * This is the story of the marriage behind some of the most famous literary works of the 20th century --and a probing consideration of what it means to be a wife and a writer in the modern world<...
BREAKING THROUGH MY LIFE IN SCIENCE
KARIKO, KATALIN.
A powerful memoir from Katalin Karikó, winner of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, whose decades-long research led to the COVID-19 vaccines "Katalin Karikó's story is an inspiration."--Bill Gates "Riveting . . . a true story of a brilliant...
Lou Reed The King of New York
Hermes, Will
The most complete and penetrating biography of the rock master, whose stature grows every year.Since his death ten years ago, Lou Reed's living presence has only grown. The great rock-poet presided over the marriage of Brill Building pop and the European avant-garde, and left American culture...
Living the Beatles Legend The Untold Story of Mal Evans
Womack, Kenneth
The first full-length biography of Mal Evans, the Beatles' beloved friend, confidant, and roadie.  Malcolm Evans, the Beatles' long-time roadie, personal assistant, and devoted friend, was an invaluable member of the band's inner circle. A towering figure in horn-rimmed glasses, Evans...
Be Useful Seven Tools for Life
Schwarzenegger, Arnold.
THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The seven rules to follow to realize your true purpose in life--distilled by Arnold Schwarzenegger from his own journey of ceaseless reinvention and extraordinary achievement, and available for absolutely anyone. The world's...
Upcycled self a memoir on the art of becoming who we are
Trotter, Tariq
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * "One of hip-hop's greatest MCs, unpacking his harrowing, remarkable journey in his own words, with enough insights for two lifetimes."--Lin-Manuel Miranda, award-winning songwriter, producer, director, and creator of In the Heights and Hamilton
SCATTERSHOT LIFE MUSIC ELTON AND ME
TAUPIN, BERNIE.
**NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER** An evocative, clear-eyed, and revealing memoir by Bernie Taupin, the lyrical master and long-time collaborator of Elton John "I loved writing, I loved chronicling life and every moment I was cogent, sober, or blitzed, I was...
UPSTAIRS DELICATESSEN ON EATING READING READING ABOUT EATING AND EATING WHILE READING
GARNER, DWIGHT.
Garner gathers a literary chorus to capture the joys of reading and eating in this comic, personal classic. Reading and eating, like Krazy and Ignatz, Sturm und Drang, prosciutto and melon, Simon and Schuster, and radishes and butter, have always, for me, simply gone...
I've Been Thinking
Dennett, Daniel C.
"How unfair for one man to be blessed with such a torrent of stimulating thoughts. Stimulating is an understatement." --Richard Dawkins A memoir by one of the greatest minds of our age, preeminent philosopher and cognitive scientist Daniel C. Dennett. Daniel C. Dennett,...
Woman they wanted shattering the illusion of the good Christian wife
Harris, Shannon (Vocalist)
"No one is coming to rescue me. I am going to have to rescue me." As a twenty-three-year-old singer and the soon-to-be wife of youth pastor Joshua Harris, nothing in Shannon Harris's secular upbringing prepared her to enter the world of conservative Christianity. Soon Joshua's...

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