Browse · 115 books
Biography & Memoir books
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All 115 biography & memoir books
A Stolen Life
Jaycee Dugard
4.5(13k)288 pages · 2011Readers drawn to survivor memoirs and the psychology of resilience under extreme conditions — particularly those who followed Dugard's case through news coverage and want the interiority, continuity, and systemic accountability that reporting could never provide.
DarkHopeful
The Friday Afternoon Club
Griffin Dunne
4.4(6.4k)400 pages · 2024Readers who want Hollywood-insider storytelling anchored in genuine literary lineage and real stakes — admirers of Joan Didion and Dominick Dunne, and readers of true-crime-adjacent memoirs who want the trial material to be substantial rather than incidental.
DarkFunny
Famesick
Lena Dunham
4.5(6.9k)416 pages · 2025Readers who followed Girls and want the unfiltered account of what was happening offscreen — and illness-memoir readers who want endometriosis, Ehlers–Danlos, and addiction rendered with specificity rather than uplift.
DarkFunny
Greenlights
Matthew McConaughey
4.6(75k)304 pages · 2020Readers drawn to celebrity memoirs with genuine philosophical backbone — particularly those who enjoy conversational, voice-driven nonfiction and are open to a hybrid of life story, diary excerpts, and aphoristic wisdom rather than a conventional career narrative.
UpliftingHopeful
The Many Lives of Mama Love
Lara Love Hardin
4.6(21k)320 pages · 2023Readers who want a fast, emotionally open memoir of addiction and jail, and who prioritize the family-custody story over a detailed account of drug use.
DarkUplifting
The Wilder Way
Eva zu Beck
4.8(212)336 pages · 2026Readers drawn to women's adventure memoir who want the full, unsanitised picture — the recklessness alongside the wonder.
HopefulMelancholy
You with the Sad Eyes
Christina Applegate
4.5(4.3k)304 pages · 2026Readers drawn to celebrity memoirs that trade career gloss for psychological rawness — particularly those interested in Christina Applegate's life through the lens of childhood trauma, MS diagnosis, and the kind of candid self-examination rarely found in the genre.
DarkFunny
I, Tina
turner-tina-with
4.7272 pages · 1986Readers who know Tina Turner through the 1993 film or her music and want her own account of the Ike and Tina years and the solo career that followed.
DarkUplifting
Pedro Pan Learning to Dance
Mario Garcia
4.8(6)196 pages · 2026Readers with a specific interest in the Operation Pedro Pan exodus who want a firsthand Cuban-American account shaped by a writer whose career in media design gives the storytelling an unusually reflective quality.
UpliftingHopeful
Prone to Wander
Suzanne LaVenture
4.9(38)224 pages · 2025Readers who have spent time abroad through study or work and are curious how one woman's decades of international travel gradually dismantled and rebuilt her sense of faith and self.
UpliftingFunny
All In
Billie Jean King, Johnette Howard, Maryanne Vollers
4.6(1.5k)528 pages · 2021Readers drawn to the intersection of sports history, feminist activism, and personal memoir who want to understand how one figure helped reshape the cultural conversation around gender, sexuality, and equity across the second half of the twentieth century.
UpliftingHopeful
My Booky Wook
Russell Brand
4.0368 pages · 2007Readers who want a frank, darkly funny celebrity memoir about addiction and ambition rather than a tidy recovery narrative, and who can handle heavy swearing and explicit material.
DarkFunny
Is It Too Late to Make a Run for It?
Judi Dench, Brendan O'Hea
368 pages · 2026Devoted fans of Judi Dench — and lovers of British theatre and film more broadly — who want the person behind the legend: candid, funny, and emotionally unguarded, delivered in the register of a long conversation rather than a polished autobiography.
FunnyCosy
The Master
Christopher Clarey
4.6(1.8k)448 pages · 2020Devoted tennis fans and sports-biography readers who want the most rigorously reported, access-driven account of how Federer's career was actually built — from his early emotional struggles to the tactical decisions behind his biggest matches.
Slow-burnUplifting
Girl, Interrupted
Susanna Kaysen
4.4(8.8k)192 pages · 1993Readers drawn to the intersection of mental health, gender, and 1960s social history who want a documentary-grounded memoir that interrogates the boundary between sanity and socially defined nonconformity.
DarkFunny
In the Realm of the Last Man
Francis Fukuyama
4.5(39)304 pages · 2026Readers already familiar with Fukuyama's body of work — The End of History, his writings on thymos and recognition — who want an unusually intimate account of how those frameworks were forged, tested, and revised across five decades of policy, power, and personal history.
MelancholyLeisurely
Means of Ascent
Robert A. Caro
4.8(1k)592 pages · 1990Readers with a serious interest in American political biography, the mechanics of mid-century democratic politics, or the psychology of political ambition — particularly those who have already read The Path to Power and want to follow Caro's portrait of Johnson through his most nakedly opportunistic years.
DarkTense
The Passage of Power
Robert A. Caro
4.7(2.6k)768 pages · 2012Readers already invested in Caro's Years of Lyndon Johnson series who want to understand how LBJ's character, resentments, and legislative genius shaped one of the most consequential political transitions in American history.
DarkHopeful
View from the East Wing
Jill Biden
4.5(1.1k)288 pages · 2025Readers drawn to intimate, character-driven political memoir who want the lived, first-person texture of the Biden White House years — including candid family grief, historic firsts, and genuinely newsworthy disclosures — rather than a forensic policy retrospective.
HopefulMelancholy
The Path to Power
Robert A. Caro
4.7(1.8k)960 pages · 1982Readers with a serious interest in American political history and the mechanics of power who are prepared to commit to an exhaustive, deeply researched account of how Lyndon Johnson's extraordinary — and often ruthless — drive for dominance was shaped by poverty, place, and relentless ambition.
DarkLeisurely
Lucky Man
Michael J. Fox
4.6(3.5k)272 pages · 2002Readers drawn to celebrity memoir or illness narrative who want an account that balances Hollywood candour with genuine emotional weight — particularly those with a personal or professional connection to Parkinson's disease.
YAUpliftingFunny
Foley is Good
Mick Foley
4.6616 pages · 2001Readers who finished Have a Nice Day! and want the continuation of Foley's story, including the "I Quit" match and his own detailed defence of the WWF against its critics.
UpliftingFunny
Making It So
Patrick Stewart
4.7480 pages · 2023Readers who enjoy theatre history, rags-to-riches life stories and a self-deprecating narrator more than franchise lore, and who don't mind a long, chronological telling.
UpliftingFunny
Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?
Steven Tyler
4.2(2.5k)432 pages · 2011Devoted Aerosmith fans and rock-memoir enthusiasts who want Steven Tyler's full personality — chaos, bravado, and all — on the page rather than a sober, structured account of his life.
PropulsiveFunny
Showing 24 of 115
Every biography & memoir book, A to Z115 titles
- A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety · Jimmy Carter
- A Little More Love · Matthew Hild
- A Stolen Life · Jaycee Dugard
- A Walk in the Park · Kevin Fedarko
- A Woman of No Importance · Sonia Purnell
- Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years · Carl Sandburg
- Alexander Hamilton · Ron Chernow
- All In · Billie Jean King, Johnette Howard, Maryanne Vollers
- AN Optimist's Tour of the Future · Mark Stevenson
- Ann Widdecombe · Jonathan Thomason
- Ask Not · Maureen Callahan
- Be Ready When the Luck Happens · Ina Garten
- Belonging to the World · Barry Hoffner
- Benjamin Franklin · Walter Isaacson
- Birds, Beasts and Relatives · Gerald Durrell
- Breaking Twitter: Elon Musk · Ben Mezrich
- Cancel Me If You Can · Dave Portnoy
- Churchill · Martin Gilbert
- Controversy Creates Cash · Eric Bischoff, Jeremy Roberts
- Does the Noise in My Head Bother You? · Steven Tyler
- Educated · Tara Westover
- Education of a Wandering Man · Louis L'Amour
- Einstein: His Life and Universe · Walter Isaacson
- Eliza Hamilton: The Extraordinary Life · Tilar J. Mazzeo
- Emergence · David Sussillo
- Famesick · Lena Dunham
- Finding Home · Djenane Nakhle
- Foley is Good · Mick Foley
- Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing · Matthew Perry
- From Here to the Great Unknown · Lisa-Marie Presley, Riley Keough
- Girl, Interrupted · Susanna Kaysen
- Greenlights · Matthew McConaughey
- Hello My Name is Sharkbait · Michael Neiman
- Hillbilly Elegy · J. D. Vance
- Home Is Not Far · Dr. Owete S. Owete
- Hooked on the Horizon · Tom Dymond
- I Could Live Here · Ellen Barone
- I, Tina · turner-tina-with
- I'll Be Happy When ... · Jared Springer
- If You Ask Me · Libby Gelman-Waxner
- In Order to Live · Yeonmi Park, Maryanne Vollers
- In the Realm of the Last Man · Francis Fukuyama
- Inside Out · Alexandra Stein
- Is It Too Late to Make a Run for It? · Judi Dench, Brendan O'Hea
- It's a Long Story: My Life · Willie Nelson
- It's Never Too Late · Marla Gibbs
- John Adams · David McCullough
- Life · Keith Richards
- Life Travel And The People In Between · Mike Nixon
- Living in the Present with John Prine · Tom Piazza
- Long Walk to Freedom · Nelson Mandela
- Lucky Man · Michael J. Fox
- Making It So · Patrick Stewart
- Master of the Senate · Robert A. Caro
- Means of Ascent · Robert A. Caro
- Mirror in the Sky · Simon Morrison
- My Booky Wook · Russell Brand
- My Family and Other Animals · Gerald Durrell
- My Year of Really Bad Dates · Rachel Lithgow
- Never Broken · Jewel
- No Time Like the Future · Michael J Fox
- Once Upon a Continent · Susanna Janssen
- One Man's Wilderness · Richard Louis Proenneke, Sam Keith
- Open · Andre Agassi
- Out of the Corner · Jennifer Grey
- Pedro Pan Learning to Dance · Mario Garcia
- Piece · Tori Amos, Ann Powers
- Prone to Wander · Suzanne LaVenture
- Seventy-Seven · Andy Murray
- Sonny Boy · Al Pacino
- Steve Jobs · Walter Isaacson
- Stolen · Katariina Rosenblatt, Cecil Murphey
- The Autobiography of Malcolm X · Malcolm X and Alex Haley
- The Beatles · Bob Spitz
- The Best Minds · Jonathan Rosen
- The Call of the Last Frontier · Melissa L. Cook
- The Crossing · Sophie Matterson
- The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man · Paul Newman
- The First American · H. W. Brands
- The Friday Afternoon Club · Griffin Dunne
- The Glass Castle · Jeannette Walls
- The Good Girl's Guide to Getting Lost · Rachel Friedman
- The Happiest Man on Earth · Eddie Jaku
- The History of Western Philosophy · Bertrand Russell
- The Inner Life of Cats: The Science · Thomas McNamee
- The Lost Girls · Jennifer Baggett
- The Many Lives of Mama Love · Lara Love Hardin
- The Master · Christopher Clarey
- The Passage of Power · Robert A. Caro
- The Path to Power · Robert A. Caro
- The Power Broker: Robert Moses · Robert A. Caro
- THE RATIONAL UNIVERSE: EINSTEIN'S BEST IDEA · Ralph Bourne
- The Road to Nowhere · Maurice Walsh
- The Snowball · Alice Schroeder
- The Story of Philosophy: Lives, Ideas · Will Durant
- The Tell · Linda I. Meyers
- The Uncool · Cameron Crowe
- The Wilder Way · Eva zu Beck
- The Wright Brothers · David McCullough
- This Time Together: Laughter and Reflection · Carol Burnett
- Truly · Lionel Richie
- Untamed · Glennon Doyle
- Upstairs at the White House · J. B. West, Mary Lynn Kotz
- Victoria Beckham · Sean Smith
- View from the East Wing · Jill Biden
- Wander · Ryan Benz
- We Are Mighty · Sharon McMahon
- When in ROAM · Pamdiana Jones
- Where the Wind Wills · D. Flower
- Wherever the Road Leads · K. Lang-Slattery
- Who Knew? · Romy Shiller
- Wild · Cheryl Strayed
- Women in Science · Rachel Ignotofsky
- Wrestling the Hulk · Linda Hogan
- You with the Sad Eyes · Christina Applegate