If you’ve ever wanted to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes, without actually having to go on a walk — memoirs are a perfect alternative. We’ve pulled together 25 memoirs filled with stories about inequality, identity, loss, trauma, mortality, homecoming, and healing. For a limited time, enjoy 20% off select memoirs.
Vanessa Springora
“Consent is a Molotov cocktail, flung at the face of the French establishment, a work of dazzling, highly controlled fury...By every conceivable metric, her book is a triumph.” – The New York Times
Edgar Gomez
“Laughs abound in this book, as do sharp confrontations with what we risk living in the margins.” – Matt Ortile, Esquire
Kendra James
“In Admissions, [James] deconstructs the chokehold that whiteness and wealth have on private education. You’ll laugh almost as much as you cringe.” – Glamour
Amartya Sen
“[A] moving, heartfelt memoir of his early life before and after Partition in Bengali India...Illuminating and wonderfully accessible as both an intimate coming-of-age tale and a crash course in economics.” – Kirkus Reviews, starred review
Grace Lavery
“Please Miss is a wickedly smart and filthily funny mosaic of criticism, memoir, and autofiction that is refreshingly avant-garde, profoundly erotic, and as enthralling as an intimate all-night conversation with the brainy high femme BFF you wish you had. I wish it upon everyone.” – Melissa Febos
Tiffanie Drayton
“Drayton has written an engaging book, which is one of my favorite kinds to read. There are things I agree with, there are things I disagree with, there are things that are new to me. I hope everyone reads it for that reason.” – Trevor Noah
Garrett Hongo
“Journeying with this gifted memorist into the heart of the 'perfect sound' is to engage with special harmonies of ecstasy and heartache. Erudite, sensual, frank and delightful, Garrett Hongo has always been for his devoted readers a singular kumu mele, our spirit guide to lovely song.” – Chang-rae Lee
Stephanie Foo
“Funny and tragic, unflinchingly honest and relentlessly hopeful, What My Bones Know is a marvel of a book.” – Ed Yong
Menachem Kaiser
“Exceptionally well written, this candid and suspenseful work recasts the injunction that one generation of survivors demands of all descendants, never to forget. Plunder is a magnificent and stunning literary debut.” – André Aciman
Sophie Lucido Johnson
“In this very frank, very funny and very page-turning time-machine-on-paper, she unburns the bridges between childhood and adulthood, going back to rescue herself fully armed with the tools of art and literature, redrawing the boundaries of what help and self might really mean.” – Chris Ware
Mikel Jollett
“This is a memoir, but it’s also a song — a lyrical labyrinth that weaves and mesmerizes, all the while proving there’s nothing more dangerous or powerful than a parent’s love. Hollywood Park is a magical debut. Loved it.” – Brad Meltzer
Sarah Fay
“We urgently need to think about our mental and emotional pain and distress in a more loving, nuanced, and intelligent way. Pathological will be a major contribution towards achieving that — a crucial and necessary book.” – Johann Hari
R/B Mertz
“This is a tale of resilience and hope penned by a writer whose singular artistic voice is like no other. Burning Butch is an account of a life lived bravely, honestly, and above all else, proudly.” – Alex Espinoza
Jo Ann Beard
“Imaginative and precise....These sharp essays cement Beard’s reputation as a master of the form...[she] can evoke many emotions in a single stroke.” – Publishers Weekly, starred review
Phuc Tran
“Funny, poignant, and unsparing, Tran’s sharp, sensitive, punk-inflected memoir presents one immigrant’s quest for self-acceptance through the lens of American and European literary classics. A highly witty and topical read — an impressive debut.” – Kirkus Reviews, starred review
Mary Laura Philpott
“Bomb Shelter is a gorgeous, gut-wrenching memoir that drew me in immediately. Mary Laura Philpott puts words to the human condition in a life-affirming, joyful, and surprisingly funny way — even as she leaves readers in tears. I’m blown away” – Lori Gottlieb
Margo Jefferson
“Margo Jefferson is one of the great innovators in modern autobiographical narrative. Her voice is pure, her insights original. This is a moving portrait of the life of a brilliant African American woman’s mind. She is so real, her sensibility so literary, her learning such a joy. The gifts of reading her are many.” – Darryl Pinckney
Danielle Geller
“Geller’s mix of archival research and personal memoir allows readers to see a refreshing variety of perspectives and layers, resulting in an eye-opening, moving narrative. A deftly rendered, powerful story of family, grief, and the search for self.” – Kirkus Reviews, starred review
Brian Broome
“Broome debuts with a magnificent and harrowing memoir that digs into the traumas of growing up Black and gay in Ohio in the late 1970s and early ’80s....There are no easy victims or villains in Broome’s painful, urgent telling — his testimony rings out as a searing critique of soul-crushing systems and stereotypes.” – Publishers Weekly, starred review
Courtney Maum
“Gorgeously written, wry but loving, heartbreaking and, most of all, roving....The Year of the Horses is a memoir of power and beauty and pain that moves across the world like the beautiful horses that carry it.” – Lisa Taddeo
Craig McNamara
“Behind great world tragedies are great personal tragedies. Craig McNamara has written a gripping, aching, memoir of what it was like to be the only son of a decent man with the blood of thousands on his hands.” – Evan Thomas
Tad Friend
“A good memoir holds your attention. A great memoir grabs it by the collar, spins it around a few times, then sets it down in a completely different spot. In working through the volcanic revelations of his father’s journals, his own past, and some gristly midlife upheavals, Tad Friend has crafted a great memoir. In the Early Times is brave, perceptive, moving, and, above all, superbly written.” – Mary Roach
Selma Blair
“Mean Baby is a fascinating exploration about the power of prophecy, of labels, and of one woman’s determination to defy them all. Blair is a rebel, an artist, and it turns out: a writer.” – Glennon Doyle
Cindy House
“Fresh, funny, and fearless, Cindy House bares her soul in Mother Noise and offers a hope-filled look at life after addiction — as a parent, as an artist, and as a citizen of the world. The humanity and honesty here are exceptional – and leavened with a delicious humor” – Bill Clegg
Larissa Pham
“Pham reinvents the memoir in a stirring debut that explores the power of language, art, and love....This is a masterpiece.” – Publishers Weekly, starred review