Genre
The best Memoir books
A specific life told from inside. The right memoir refuses the redemption arc and respects what survival actually looks like.
12 reviews in this genre.
Editor's picks
Highest-rated memoir on the shelf
I Am, I Am, I Am
by Maggie O'Farrell
I Am, I Am, I Am by Maggie O'Farrell 2018 review. A memoir told through seventeen brushes with death. O'Farrell's structural pre-Hamnet memoir and one of the canonical contemporary British memoirs.
Between the World and Me
by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates 2015 review. A book-length letter to his fifteen-year-old son about race in America. National Book Award winner.
Just Mercy
by Bryan Stevenson
Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson 2014 review. The Equal Justice Initiative founder's memoir of his Alabama capital-case work. Carnegie Medal winner and the basis for the 2019 film.
The Choice
by Edith Eger
The Choice by Edith Eger 2017 review. A Hungarian ballerina survives Auschwitz at sixteen and becomes a California clinical psychologist. Canonical contemporary American Holocaust memoir.
The Return
by Hisham Matar
The Return by Hisham Matar 2016 review. Matar returns to Libya in 2012 to investigate the 1990 disappearance of his father, the opposition leader Jaballa Matar. Pulitzer Prize.
A Promised Land
by Barack Obama
A Promised Land by Barack Obama 2020 review. The first volume of Barack Obama's presidential memoirs, covering his early political life through the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011. The most thoroughly written contemporary presidential memoir in modern American letters.
Becoming
by Michelle Obama
Becoming by Michelle Obama 2018 review. Michelle Obama's memoir, from her South Side Chicago childhood through the Obama White House. The political memoir that sold seventeen million copies, and the one that genuinely earns its bestseller status.
Educated
by Tara Westover
Educated by Tara Westover 2018 review. The memoir of growing up in a survivalist Idaho family that kept her out of school until age seventeen, and her subsequent education through Brigham Young University and Cambridge. The PEN/Bingham winner and one of the canonical contemporary memoirs.
Crying in H Mart
by Michelle Zauner
Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner 2021 review. Michelle Zauner's memoir about her Korean mother's death from pancreatic cancer and the Korean food that connected them. The breakout literary commercial memoir of 2021.
Solito
by Javier Zamora
Solito by Javier Zamora 2022 review. The 1999 migration of a nine-year-old Salvadoran boy on foot and by sea across two months. The canonical contemporary memoir of unaccompanied minor migration to the United States.
Born a Crime
by Trevor Noah
Born a Crime by Trevor Noah 2016 review. Trevor Noah's memoir of growing up mixed-race in late-apartheid and early-post-apartheid South Africa. The canonical contemporary South African memoir.
Spare
by Prince Harry
Spare by Prince Harry 2023 review. The Duke of Sussex's memoir of his life from Diana's death through the 2020 California relocation. The fastest-selling non-fiction book in English-language publishing history.
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