Past Kindle Book Deals but Still Must Read Books!
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495 past books matching Biographies & Memoirs
At twenty-two, Suleika Jaouad’s dream life shattered with a leukemia diagnosis.
Between Two Kingdoms
Biographies & Memoirs
Our take
At twenty-two, Suleika Jaouad’s dream life shattered with a leukemia diagnosis. After four years of fighting for survival, she was cured—but learning to live again was the real challenge. Between Two Kingdoms is a profoundly moving memoir of illness, resilience, and rediscovering life after loss. A New York Times bestseller and best book of the year.
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About the book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A deeply moving memoir of illness, survival, and the journey to rediscover life.
At twenty-two, Suleika Jaouad had big dreams—living in Paris, falling in love, and launching a career as a war correspondent. But an unexpected itch turned into unrelenting exhaustion, leading to a devastating leukemia diagnosis and a 35% chance of survival.
For the next four years, Jaouad fought for her life from a hospital bed, chronicling her journey in The New York Times. But when the doctors declared her “cured,” she faced a new challenge: how to live again.
Embarking on a 100-day, 15,000-mile road trip, Jaouad met fellow survivors navigating their own uncertain futures. In Between Two Kingdoms, she delivers a raw, inspiring reflection on illness, healing, and the spaces between survival and truly living.
One of the best books of the year—The New York Times, The Washington Post, Bloomberg.
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At twenty-seven, reeling from divorce, Ilana Kurshan turned to the Talmud, joining daf yomi, the world’s largest book club.
If All the Seas Were Ink
Biographies & Memoirs
Our take
At twenty-seven, reeling from divorce, Ilana Kurshan turned to the Talmud, joining daf yomi, the world’s largest book club. What she found was not just wisdom, but a path through heartbreak, healing, and love. If All the Seas Were Ink is a beautifully written memoir that blends scholarship and self-discovery. Winner of the Sami Rohr Prize.
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About the book
"There is humor and heartbreak in these pages. . . . [Kurshan] immerses herself in the demands of daily Talmud study and allows the words of ancient scholars to transform the patterns of her own life." —The Wall Street Journal
At the age of twenty-seven, alone in Jerusalem in the wake of a painful divorce, Ilana Kurshan joined the world's largest book club, learning daf yomi, Hebrew for "daily page" of the Talmud, a book of rabbinic teachings spanning about six hundred years. Her story is a tale of heartache and humor, of love and loss, of marriage and motherhood, and of learning to put one foot in front of the other by turning page after page.
Kurshan takes us on a deeply accessible and personal guided tour of the Talmud. For people of the book—both Jewish and non-Jewish—If All the Seas Were Ink is a celebration of learning, through literature, how to fall in love once again.
"Brilliant, beautifully written, sensitive, original." —The Jewish Standard
"A beautiful and inspiring book. Both religious and secular readers will find themselves immensely moved by [Kurshan's] personal story." —The Jerusalem Post
"Engrossing." —American Jewish World
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At eleven, Joseph Weismann was sent to an internment camp during the 1942 Vél’ d’Hiv roundup.
After the Roundup
Biographies & Memoirs
Our take
At eleven, Joseph Weismann was sent to an internment camp during the 1942 Vél’ d’Hiv roundup. While others were deported to Auschwitz, he risked everything in a daring escape—only to face more hardships in Nazi-occupied France. After the Roundup is a gripping Holocaust memoir of survival, courage, and resilience—now available in English for the first time.
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A Holocaust memoir of courage, survival, and resilience—now available in English for the first time.
On July 16, 1942, eleven-year-old Joseph Weismann was rounded up with his family and 13,000 other Jews in Paris. Held in the horrific conditions of the Vélodrome d’Hiver before being transported to the Beaune-la-Rolande internment camp, Joseph was brutally separated from his parents—who were sent to Auschwitz. Told they would soon be reunited, Joseph and his friend Joe Kogan saw through the lie and risked everything in a daring escape.
Eluding guards, crawling under razor-sharp barbed wire, and fleeing into Nazi-occupied France, Joseph found freedom—but his fight for survival was just beginning.
For decades, he kept his story to himself. Now, in After the Roundup, he shares his harrowing journey—a powerful testament to the resilience of the human spirit.
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A young man is torn from his home in West Africa and forced into a life of bondage in America, yet his name and lineage endure.
Roots
Biographies & Memoirs
Our take
A young man is torn from his home in West Africa and forced into a life of bondage in America, yet his name and lineage endure. Following Kunta Kinte and his descendants across generations, this sweeping historical saga traces the brutal realities of slavery and the resilience of a family determined to survive. The novel confronts history with unflinching clarity and lasting emotional force.
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About the book
Based off of the bestselling author's family history, this novel tells the story of Kunta Kinte, who is sold into slavery in the United States where he and his descendants live through major historic events.
When Roots was first published forty years ago, the book electrified the nation: it received a Pulitzer Prize and was a #1 New York Times bestseller for 22 weeks. The celebrated miniseries that followed a year later was a coast-to-coast event-over 130 million Americans watched some or all of the broadcast. In the four decades since then, the story of the young African slave Kunta Kinte and his descendants has lost none of its power to enthrall and provoke.
Now, Roots once again bursts onto the national scene, and at a time when the race conversation has never been more charged. It is a book for the legions of earlier readers to revisit and for a new generation to discover.
To quote from the introduction by Michael Eric Dyson: "Alex Haley's Roots is unquestionably one of the nation's seminal texts. It affected events far beyond its pages and was a literary North Star.... Each generation must make up its own mind about how it will navigate the treacherous waters of our nation's racial sin. And each generation must overcome our social ills through greater knowledge and decisive action. Roots is a stirring reminder that we can achieve these goals only if we look history squarely in the face."
The star- studded cast in this new event series includes Academy Award-winners Forest Whitaker and Anna Paquin, Laurence Fishburne, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Derek Luke, Grammy Award-winner Tip "T.I." Harris, and Mekhi Phifer. Questlove of The Roots is the executive music producer for the miniseries's stirring soundtrack.
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At eighteen, Esther volunteered to be a suicide bomber.
Defying Jihad
Biographies & Memoirs
Our take
At eighteen, Esther volunteered to be a suicide bomber. Two nights before her mission, a dream changed everything. In a society where leaving Islam meant death, she defied jihad and became a Christian. But to survive, she had to win public debates against Muslim clerics. Defying Jihad is a true story of faith, courage, and sacrifice.
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About the book
“If you truly love Allah, you will die for him.”
At eighteen, Esther was ready to prove her devotion. Volunteering as a suicide bomber was her final test—a chance to win both the love of Allah and the approval of her father. But two nights before her deadly mission, a dream changed everything.
In a society where leaving Islam meant a death sentence, Esther defied jihad and became a follower of Jesus. Instead of an immediate execution, her father issued a challenge: public debates against Muslim scholars. If she won, she might survive. If she lost, she must renounce her faith—or die.
A true story of courage, sacrifice, and an unshakable faith, Defying Jihad is the incredible journey of a woman who risked everything to follow Jesus.
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A strong choice for readers who appreciate candid memoirs about poverty, motherhood, personal transformation, and finding humor in difficult circumstances.
Rabbit
Biographies & Memoirs
Our take
Called “an absolute must-read” by Shondaland, this memoir follows comedian Patricia Williams, known as Ms. Pat, from her childhood in poverty-stricken Atlanta through teenage motherhood, drug dealing, and her determination to build a better life for her family. Told with honesty and humor, it has a 4.5-star average from more than 16,400 Goodreads ratings. A strong choice for readers who appreciate candid memoirs about poverty, motherhood, personal transformation, and finding humor in difficult circumstances.
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About the book
Nominated for the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work
"An absolute must-read" – Shondaland
“[Rabbit] tells how it went down with brutal honesty and outrageous humor” – New York Times
They called her Rabbit.
Patricia Williams (aka Ms. Pat) was born and raised in Atlanta at the height of the crack epidemic. One of five children, Pat watched as her mother struggled to get by on charity, cons, and petty crimes. At age seven, Pat was taught to roll drunks for money. At twelve, she was targeted for sex by a man eight years her senior. By thirteen, she was pregnant. By fifteen, Pat was a mother of two.
Alone at sixteen, Pat was determined to make a better life for her children. But with no job skills and an eighth-grade education, her options were limited. She learned quickly that hustling and humor were the only tools she had to survive. Rabbit is an unflinching memoir of cinematic scope and unexpected humor. With wisdom and humor, Pat gives us a rare glimpse of what it’s really like to be a black mom in America.
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Close to the Knives turns personal survival into testimony, tracing a life shaped by violence, desire, art, illness, and public rage.
Close to the Knives
Biographies & Memoirs · LGBTQIA+
Our take
Close to the Knives turns personal survival into testimony, tracing a life shaped by violence, desire, art, illness, and public rage. Through essays rooted in New York’s margins, David Wojnarowicz writes from the edge of abuse, homelessness, queer identity, activism, and the AIDS crisis. This is memoir as confrontation, intimate and unsparing in its portrait of a body and voice under siege.
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The "fierce, erotic, haunting, truthful" memoirs of an extraordinary artist, activist, and iconoclast who lit up late-twentieth-century New York (Dennis Cooper).
One of the New York Times' "50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years"
David Wojnarowicz's brief but eventful life was not easy. From a suburban adolescence marked by neglect, drugs, prostitution, and abuse to a squalid life on the streets of New York City, to fame—and infamy—as an activist and controversial visual artist whose work was lambasted in the halls of Congress, all before his early death from AIDS at age thirty-seven, Wojnarowicz seemed to be at war with a homophobic "establishment" and the world itself. Yet what emerged from the darkness was a truly extraordinary artist and human being—an angry young man of remarkable poetic sensibilities who was inordinately sympathetic to those who, like him, lived and struggled outside society's boundaries.
Close to the Knives is his searing yet strangely beautiful account told in a collection of powerful essays. An author whom reviewers have compared to Kerouac and Genet, David Wojnarowicz mesmerizes, horrifies, and delights in equal measure with his unabashed honesty. At once savage and funny, poignant and sexy, compassionate and unforgiving, his words and stories cut like knives, leaving indelible marks on all who read them.
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A strong fit for readers who enjoy candid celebrity memoirs about classic Hollywood, creative partnerships, family life, and the pressures of fame.
Home Work
Biographies & Memoirs
Our take
A New York Times bestseller, Home Work follows Julie Andrews from her arrival in Hollywood through Mary Poppins, The Sound of Music, Victor/Victoria, and other major projects while also reflecting on motherhood, marriage, family changes, and her relationship with Blake Edwards, with a 4.6-star rating from more than 6,900 Amazon reviewers. A strong fit for readers who enjoy candid celebrity memoirs about classic Hollywood, creative partnerships, family life, and the pressures of fame.
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About the book
In this New York Times bestselling follow-up to her critically acclaimed memoir, Home, Julie Andrews reflects on her astonishing career, including such classics as Mary Poppins, The Sound of Music, and Victor/Victoria.
In Home, the number one New York Times international bestseller, Julie Andrews recounted her difficult childhood and her emergence as an acclaimed singer and performer on the stage.
With this second memoir, Home Work: A Memoir of My Hollywood Years, Andrews picks up the story with her arrival in Hollywood and her phenomenal rise to fame in her earliest films -- Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music. Andrews describes her years in the film industry -- from the incredible highs to the challenging lows. Not only does she discuss her work in now-classic films and her collaborations with giants of cinema and television, she also unveils her personal story of adjusting to a new and often daunting world, dealing with the demands of unimaginable success, being a new mother, the end of her first marriage, embracing two stepchildren, adopting two more children, and falling in love with the brilliant and mercurial Blake Edwards. The pair worked together in numerous films, including Victor/Victoria, the gender-bending comedy that garnered multiple Oscar nominations.
Cowritten with her daughter, Emma Walton Hamilton, and told with Andrews's trademark charm and candor, Home Work takes us on a rare and intimate journey into an extraordinary life that is funny, heartrending, and inspiring.
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From imperial China to the Cultural Revolution, Remembering Shanghai traces five generations of the Sun family through glamour, tragedy, and survival.
Remembering Shanghai
Biographies & Memoirs
Our take
From imperial China to the Cultural Revolution, Remembering Shanghai traces five generations of the Sun family through glamour, tragedy, and survival. When Isabel Sun flees to Hong Kong at eighteen, she doesn’t realize she’ll never see her father again. Fifty years later, she returns with her daughter to confront the past. Winner of 29 Book Awards.
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About the book
Winner of 29 Book Awards, including the Writer’s Digest Grand Prize and the Rubery Book Award Book of the Year
Remembering Shanghai is a captivating true story of glamour, drama, and tragedy told through five generations of the Sun family, from the twilight of imperial China to the Cultural Revolution.
In 1930s and ’40s Shanghai, Isabel Sun’s life is one of privilege and elegance. Her scholar father and fashionable mother shelter her from the civil unrest and Japanese occupation that threaten their gilded existence. But when Mao rises to power, Isabel flees to Hong Kong at eighteen, unaware she will never see her father again.
Fifty years later, Isabel returns to Shanghai with her daughter, Claire, to confront the family’s extraordinary past—one of love, betrayal, kidnappers, concubines, glittering palaces, and underworld crime lords.
Lavishly illustrated and meticulously researched, Remembering Shanghai is a vivid memoir of identity, loss, and redemption.
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In 1973, Norma Cobb and her family braved Alaska’s brutal wilderness to claim one of the last homesteads under the Homestead Act.
Arctic Homestead
Biographies & Memoirs
Our take
In 1973, Norma Cobb and her family braved Alaska’s brutal wilderness to claim one of the last homesteads under the Homestead Act. Facing grizzlies, brutal winters, and ruthless neighbors, Arctic Homestead is Norma’s unforgettable story of courage, survival, and the power of family. A true testament to the pioneering spirit.
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About the book
“A memoir as wild, engaging, stubborn, and authentic as that distant valley where [Cobb’s] family staked out the last plot in America.” —John Balzar, author of Yukon Alone
In 1973, Norma Cobb, her husband Lester, and their five young children left the comforts of the lower 48 to claim a plot of land under the Homestead Act—one of the last available, deep in Alaska’s unforgiving interior. Facing brutal winters, prowling grizzlies, and ruthless neighbors willing to burn them out or steal their land, the Cobbs quickly learned that the Alaskan frontier was as dangerous as it was beautiful.
Arctic Homestead is Norma Cobb’s incredible true story of resilience, survival, and the unbreakable bonds of family. Against all odds, Cobb’s courage and determination shine through, making this memoir a testament to the pioneering spirit and the strength of a mother’s love.
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Good for readers who want memoirs about resilience, identity, family abandonment, and making peace with the past.
Running from the Mirror
Biographies & Memoirs
Our take
Called “Vivid and engrossing from start to finish” by Midwest Book Review, Running from the Mirror follows Howard Shulman from abandonment as an infant and years of painful reconstruction to life as an outcast, survivor, and successful entrepreneur, with a 4.6-star rating from more than 2,100 Amazon reviewers. Good for readers who want memoirs about resilience, identity, family abandonment, and making peace with the past.
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"Vivid and engrossing from start to finish.”—Midwest Book Review
As quickly as his face disappeared, so did his mother and father.
Just three days after he was born, Howard Shulman contracted an infection that attacked his face, devouring his nose, lips, lower right eyelid, tear ducts, and palate. Abandoned at the hospital by his parents, he became a ward of New Jersey under the care of a state-employed surgeon who experimentally rebuilt his face.
Running from the Mirror is a poignant story of one man's struggle to survive against staggering odds. Howard gives an unflinching account of growing up a bullied outcast with no family to officially call his own. Relying on little more than street smarts and grit, he rises from dishwasher to successful entrepreneur. When a chance event shatters his world once again, he must make a daunting choice: live in the shadows of his painful past or summon the strength to make peace with it.
Filled with heart-wrenching suffering as well as soul-lifting joy, Running from the Mirror is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit.
What readers are saying about Running from the Mirror:
“A beautiful story of an amazing man. I knew I was going to love it and I was right. This is the kind of book that inspires and empowers.”—Goodreads Reviewer, 5 STARS
“A truly remarkable memoir . . . amazing and powerful . . . I won't forget Howard Shulman's story.”—Goodreads Reviewer, 5 STARS
“Spellbinding. This is a great story of heartbreak and overcoming so much and coming through all to peace, acceptance, and love.”—Goodreads Reviewer, 5 STARS
“This is a really great memoir. I was rooting for Howard the whole way. What an amazing, brave, resilient man! I will definitely be recommending this book.”—Goodreads Reviewer, 5 STARS
“Excellent! Autobiographies are my favorite genre and I’ve read hundreds. This is one of the best I’ve read in recent years. It will have you laughing out loud, flipping pages in suspense, and shedding tears.”—Goodreads Reviewer, 5 STARS
“This is one of the best memoirs I've ever read. I was very excited to read it and I wasn't disappointed. It's inspirational and beautifully written.”—Goodreads Reviewer, 5 STARS
“I wish I could give this book more than 5 stars! My favorite memoir to date. You will feel compassion to the core, and your heart will have a special place for Howard forever.”—Goodreads Reviewer, 5 STARS
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A childhood shaped by abandonment, racism, and trauma becomes the foundation for a powerful voice.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Biographies & Memoirs
Our take
A childhood shaped by abandonment, racism, and trauma becomes the foundation for a powerful voice. In I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou recounts her early years in the segregated South, the violence that silenced her, and the gradual return of her voice through literature and self-discovery. This memoir explores resilience, identity, and the enduring search for freedom.
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About the book
Here is a book as joyous and painful, as mysterious and memorable, as childhood itself. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings captures the longing of lonely children, the brute insult of bigotry, and the wonder of words that can make the world right. Maya Angelou’s debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide.
Sent by their mother to live with their devout, self-sufficient grandmother in a small Southern town, Maya and her brother, Bailey, endure the ache of abandonment and the prejudice of the local “powhitetrash.” At eight years old and back at her mother’s side in St. Louis, Maya is attacked by a man many times her age—and has to live with the consequences for a lifetime. Years later, in San Francisco, Maya learns that love for herself, the kindness of others, her own strong spirit, and the ideas of great authors (“I met and fell in love with William Shakespeare”) will allow her to be free instead of imprisoned.
Poetic and powerful, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings will touch hearts and change minds for as long as people read.
“I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings liberates the reader into life simply because Maya Angelou confronts her own life with such a moving wonder, such a luminous dignity.”—James Baldwin
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