best biographies in 2022

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The Best Reviewed Memoirs and Biographies of 2022

Featuring buster keaton, jean rhys, bernardine evaristo, kate beaton, and more.

We’ve come to the end of another bountiful literary year, and for all of us review rabbits here at Book Marks, that can mean only one thing: basic math, and lots of it.

Yes, using reviews drawn from more than 150 publications, over the next two weeks we’ll be calculating and revealing the most critically-acclaimed books of 2022, in the categories of (deep breath): Fiction ; Nonfiction ; Memoir and Biography; Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Horror; Short Story Collections; Essay Collections; Poetry; Mystery and Crime; Graphic Literature ; and Literature in Translation .

Today’s installment: Memoir and Biography .

Brought to you by Book Marks , Lit Hub’s “Rotten Tomatoes for books.”

1. We Don’t Know Ourselves by Fintan O’Toole (Liveright) 17 Rave • 4 Positive • 1 Mixed • 1 Pan

“One of the many triumphs of Fintan O’Toole’s We Don’t Know Ourselves is that he manages to find a form that accommodates the spectacular changes that have occurred in Ireland over the past six decades, which happens to be his life span … it is not a memoir, nor is it an absolute history, nor is it entirely a personal reflection or a crepuscular credo. It is, in fact, all of these things helixed together: his life, his country, his thoughts, his misgivings, his anger, his pride, his doubt, all of them belonging, eventually, to us … O’Toole, an agile cultural commentator, considers himself to be a representative of the blank slate on which the experiment of change was undertaken, but it’s a tribute to him that he maintains his humility, his sharpness and his enlightened distrust …

O’Toole writes brilliantly and compellingly of the dark times, but he is graceful enough to know that there is humor and light in the cracks. There is a touch of Eduardo Galeano in the way he can settle on a telling phrase … But the real accomplishment of this book is that it achieves a conscious form of history-telling, a personal hybrid that feels distinctly honest and humble at the same time. O’Toole has not invented the form, but he comes close to perfecting it. He embraces the contradictions and the confusion. In the process, he weaves the flag rather than waving it.”

–Colum McCann ( The New York Times Book Review )

2. Thin Places: A Natural History of Healing and Home by Kerri Ní Dochartaigh (Milkweed)

12 Rave • 7 Positive • 2 Mixed

“Assured and affecting … A powerful and bracing memoir … This is a book that will make you see the world differently: it asks you to reconsider the animals and insects we often view as pests – the rat, for example, and the moth. It asks you to look at the sea and the sky and the trees anew; to wonder, when you are somewhere beautiful, whether you might be in a thin place, and what your responsibilities are to your location.It asks you to show compassion for people you think are difficult, to cultivate empathy, to try to understand the trauma that made them the way they are.”

–Lynn Enright ( The Irish Times )

3. Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton (Drawn & Quarterly)

14 Rave • 4 Positive

“It could hardly be more different in tone from [Beaton’s] popular larky strip Hark! A Vagrant … Yes, it’s funny at moments; Beaton’s low-key wryness is present and correct, and her drawings of people are as charming and as expressive as ever. But its mood overall is deeply melancholic. Her story, which runs to more than 400 pages, encompasses not only such thorny matters as social class and environmental destruction; it may be the best book I have ever read about sexual harassment …

There are some gorgeous drawings in Ducks of the snow and the starry sky at night. But the human terrain, in her hands, is never only black and white … And it’s this that gives her story not only its richness and depth, but also its astonishing grace. Life is complex, she tell us, quietly, and we are all in it together; each one of us is only trying to survive. What a difficult, gorgeous and abidingly humane book. It really does deserve to win all the prizes.”

–Rachel Cooke ( The Guardian )

4. Stay True by Hua Hsu (Doubleday)

14 Rave • 3 Positive

“… quietly wrenching … To say that this book is about grief or coming-of-age doesn’t quite do it justice; nor is it mainly about being Asian American, even though there are glimmers of that too. Hsu captures the past by conveying both its mood and specificity … This is a memoir that gathers power through accretion—all those moments and gestures that constitute experience, the bits and pieces that coalesce into a life … Hsu is a subtle writer, not a showy one; the joy of Stay True sneaks up on you, and the wry jokes are threaded seamlessly throughout.”

–Jennifer Szalai ( The New York Times )

5.  Manifesto: On Never Giving Up by Bernardine Evaristo (Grove)

13 Rave • 4 Positive

“Part coming-of-age story and part how-to manual, the book is, above all, one of the most down-to-earth and least self-aggrandizing works of self-reflection you could hope to read. Evaristo’s guilelessness is refreshing, even unsettling … With ribald humour and admirable candour, Evaristo takes us on a tour of her sexual history … Characterized by the resilience of its author, it is replete with stories about the communities and connections Evaristo has cultivated over forty years … Invigoratingly disruptive as an artist, Evaristo is a bridge-builder as a human being.”

–Emily Bernard ( The Times Literary Supplement )

1. Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne by Katherine Rundell (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

14 Rave • 4 Positive • 1 Mixed

“Rundell is right that Donne…must never be forgotten, and she is the ideal person to evangelise him for our age. She shares his linguistic dexterity, his pleasure in what TS Eliot called ‘felt thought’, his ability to bestow physicality on the abstract … It’s a biography filled with gaps and Rundell brings a zest for imaginative speculation to these. We know so little about Donne’s wife, but Rundell brings her alive as never before … Rundell confronts the difficult issue of Donne’s misogyny head-on … This is a determinedly deft book, and I would have liked it to billow a little more, making room for more extensive readings of the poems and larger arguments about the Renaissance. But if there is an overarching argument, then it’s about Donne as an ‘infinity merchant’ … To read Donne is to grapple with a vision of the eternal that is startlingly reinvented in the here and now, and Rundell captures this vision alive in all its power, eloquence and strangeness”

–Laura Feigel ( The Guardian )

2. The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World by Jonathan Freedland (Harper)

12 Rave • 3 Positive

“Compelling … We know about Auschwitz. We know what happened there. But Freedland, with his strong, clear prose and vivid details, makes us feel it, and the first half of this book is not an easy read. The chillingly efficient mass murder of thousands of people is harrowing enough, but Freedland tells us stories of individual evils as well that are almost harder to take … His matter-of-fact tone makes it bearable for us to continue to read … The Escape Artist is riveting history, eloquently written and scrupulously researched. Rosenberg’s brilliance, courage and fortitude are nothing short of amazing.”

–Laurie Hertzel ( The Star Tribune )

3. I Used to Live Here Once: The Haunted Life of Jean Rhys by Miranda Seymour (W. W. Norton & Company)

11 Rave • 4 Positive • 1 Pan

“…illuminating and meticulously researched … paints a deft portrait of a flawed, complex, yet endlessly fascinating woman who, though repeatedly bowed, refused to be broken … Following dismal reviews of her fourth novel, Rhys drifted into obscurity. Ms. Seymour’s book could have lost momentum here. Instead, it compellingly charts turbulent, drink-fueled years of wild moods and reckless acts before building to a cathartic climax with Rhys’s rescue, renewed lease on life and late-career triumph … is at its most powerful when Ms. Seymour, clear-eyed but also with empathy, elaborates on Rhys’s woes …

Ms. Seymour is less convincing with her bold claim that Rhys was ‘perhaps the finest English woman novelist of the twentieth century.’ However, she does expertly demonstrate that Rhys led a challenging yet remarkable life and that her slim but substantial novels about beleaguered women were ahead of their time … This insightful biography brilliantly shows how her many battles were lost and won.”

–Malcolm Forbes ( The Wall Street Journal )

4. The Facemaker: A Visionary Surgeon’s Battle to Mend the Disfigured Soldiers of World War I by Lindsey Fitzharris (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

9 Rave • 5 Positive • 1 Mixed

“Grisly yet inspiring … Fitzharris depicts her hero as irrepressibly dedicated and unfailingly likable. The suspense of her narrative comes not from any interpersonal drama but from the formidable challenges posed by the physical world … The Facemaker is mostly a story of medical progress and extraordinary achievement, but as Gillies himself well knew—grappling daily with the unbearable suffering that people willingly inflicted on one another—failure was never far behind.”

5. Buster Keaton: A Filmmaker’s Life by James Curtis (Knopf)

8 Rave • 6 Positive • 1 Mixed

“Keaton fans have often complained that nearly all biographies of him suffer from a questionable slant or a cursory treatment of key events. With Buster Keaton: A Filmmaker’s Life —at more than 800 pages dense with research and facts—Mr. Curtis rectifies that situation, and how. He digs deep into Keaton’s process and shows how something like the brilliant two-reeler Cops went from a storyline conceived from necessity—construction on the movie lot encouraged shooting outdoors—to a masterpiece … This will doubtless be the primary reference on Keaton’s life for a long time to come … the worse Keaton’s life gets, the more engrossing Mr. Curtis’s book becomes.”

–Farran Smith Nehme ( The Wall Street Journal )

Our System:

RAVE = 5 points • POSITIVE = 3 points • MIXED = 1 point • PAN = -5 points

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The Best Biographies of 2022

Summer Loomis

Summer Loomis has been writing for Book Riot since 2019. She obsessively curates her library holds and somehow still manages to borrow too many books at once. She appreciates a good deadline and likes knowing if 164 other people are waiting for the same title. It's good peer pressure! She doesn't have a podcast but if she did, she hopes it would sound like Buddhability . The world could always use more people creating value with their lives everyday.

View All posts by Summer Loomis

The following are the best biographies 2022 had to offer, according to my brain and my tastes. And I know it might sound like something everyone says, but it was really hard to pick them this year. Like many people, I love “best of” lists for the year, even when I disagree with the titles that make the cut. There is something about narrowing the field to “the best” that makes me excited to read the list and see what I’ve read already and which gems I’ve missed that year. If you want to look back at some of the titles Book Riot chose in 2021, try this best books of 2021 by genre or best books for 2020 . Both will probably quadruple your TBR, but they’re super fun to read anyway.

For 2022 in particular, there were a ton of excellent titles to choose from, in both biographies and memoirs. I am not being polite here but let me just say that it was genuinely hard to choose. To make it easier on myself, I have included some memoirs to pair with the best biographies of 2022 below. If you don’t see your absolute favorite, it’s either because I didn’t like it (I don’t believe in spending time on books I don’t like) or because I ran out of space. And it was most likely the latter!

His Name is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice by Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa

Samuels and Olorunnipa are two Washington Post journalists who meticulously researched Floyd’s personal history in order to better understand not only his life and experiences before his death, but also the systemic forces that eventually contributed to his murder. While very interesting, this is also a harder read and very frustrating at times as there is so much loss wrapped up into this story. Definitely one of the best biographies of 2022 and one that I think will be read for years to come.

Paul Laurence Dunbar: The Life and Times of a Caged Bird by Gene Andrew Jarrett

This is one of those classic biographies that I think readers will just love diving into. Rich in detail and nuance, it drops readers into Dunbar’s life and times, offering a fascinating look at both the literary and personal life of this great American poet. If you are able to read on audio, you may want to check out actor Mirron E. Willis’s excellent narration.

Didn’t We Almost Have it All: In Defense of Whitney Houston by Gerrick Kennedy

Maybe you’re a huge fan or maybe you don’t know who Whitney Houston was, but either way, you can still read this and enjoy it. Kennedy is very clear that he didn’t set out to write a traditional biography. He wasn’t trying to dig up new “dirt” about the singer or to ask people in her life to reflect back on her now that she has been gone for 10 years. Instead, Kennedy tackles something deeper and possibly harder: to see and appreciate Houston as the fully-formed and talented human being that she was and to understand in full her influence over popular culture and music.

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Finding Me by Viola Davis

If you are also interested in reading a memoir from 2022, you could pair Whitney Houston’s biography with Viola Davis’s book. It was a title I saw everywhere in 2022, but didn’t pick up until the end of the year. My only two cents to add to this strong choice is that I was also just about the last person on earth who hadn’t heard about Davis’s childhood. Please don’t go into this without knowing at least something about what she had to overcome. However, despite all that, I still think it is an excellent and ultimately uplifting read. Content warnings include domestic violence, child endangerment, physical and sexual abuse, rape and sexual assault, drug addiction, and animal death. And also the unrelentingly grinding nature of poverty.

Like Water: A Cultural History of Bruce Lee by Daryl Joji Maeda 

This is a much more academic presentation of Bruce Lee and the myriad of ways he can be “read” in his connections and contributions to American pop culture. If you or someone you know is itching to read an extremely detailed and deeply considered look at Lee’s life, then this is the book for you. If you read on audio, be sure to check out David Lee Huynh’s narration.

We Were Dreamers: An Immigrant Superhero Origin Story by Simu Liu

If you want to read something much lighter but still connected to Asian representation in Western movies, you could do worse than Liu’s 2022 memoir. In comparison to other books on this list, this felt like a much lighter read to me, but it is not without some heavier moments. While I am not a superfan of Liu (because I’m not really a superfan of anyone), I did enjoy learning about Liu’s childhood and especially hearing little details like that his grandparents called him a nickname that basically translated to “little furry caterpillar” as a child. I mean, is there anything more adorable for a kid?

The Man from the Future: The Visionary Life of John von Neumann by Ananyo Bhattacharya

This is another meaty biography that readers will just adore. Complex and fascinating, von Neumann’s curiosity was legendary and his contributions are so far-reaching that it is hard to imagine any one person undertaking them all. This is a good choice for readers who are fascinated by mathematics, big personalities, and intellectual puzzles.

Agatha Christie: An Elusive Woman by Lucy Worsley

This is another best biography of 2022 that many, many readers will want to sink into. The audio is also by the author so you may want to read it that way. Whether someone reads it with eyes or ears (or both!), this book is sure to interest many curious Christie fans. And if Worsley’s biography isn’t enough for you, you may also enjoy this breakdown of why Christie is one of the best-selling novelists of all time or these 8 audiobooks for Agatha Christie fans .

The School that Escaped the Nazis: The True Story of the Schoolteacher Who Defied Hitler by Deborah Cadbury

Cadbury writes a fascinating biography of Anna Essinger, a schoolteacher who managed to smuggle her students out of a Germany succumbing to Hitler’s rise to power and all the horror that was to follow. Essinger’s bravery and clear-eyed understanding of what was happening around her is amazing. This is a thrilling and fascinating biography readers will no doubt find inspirational.

The Escape Artist: The Man who Broke out of Auschwitz to Warn the World by Jonathan Freedland

Freedland is a British journalist who has written this thoroughly engrossing book about Rudolf Vrba, a man who managed to escape from Auschwitz. It’s no surprise that this is a very important but difficult read. For those who can manage it, I highly recommend immersing oneself in this historical nonfiction biography about a man who survived some of the darkest events of human history.

That is my list of the best biographies of 2022, with a few memoirs for those who are interested. And now of course, I need to mention several titles I have yet to get to from 2022: Hua Hsu’s Stay True , Zain Asher’s Where the Children Take Us , Fatima Ali’s Savor: A Chef’s Hunger for More , and Dan Charnas and Jeff Peretz’s Dilla Time , to name a few!

Also Bernardine Evaristo published Manifesto: On Never Giving Up in 2022 and somehow it slipped through the cracks of my TBR. I will have to make time for that one soon.

If you still need more titles to explore, try these 50 best biographies or 20 biographies for kids . And to that latter list, I might add that a children’s biography came out about Octavia Butler in 2022 called Star Child by Haitian American author Ibi Zoboi, so you might want to check that out too!

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Best Biographies of 2022

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The 20 Best Memoirs of 2022

From marriage to medicine to masculinity, the year's best memoirs dig deep into thorny topics.

Every product was carefully curated by an Esquire editor. We may earn a commission from these links.

Still, our favorite memoirs of 2022 elevate the form to new heights. They tackle personal, psychological, and philosophical concerns through topics ranging from ancestry to medicine to marriage. With guts and grace, these authors dive deep into their loves and losses, and come ashore with these dazzling treasures for you to read. (Or give ! What better gift than that of a remarkable true story?)

Stay True, by Hua Hsu

When Hsu arrived at Berkeley in the 1990s, a rebellious undergrad obsessed with creating zines and developing “a worldview defined by music,” he made an unexpected friend. At first, Hsu wrote his fraternity brother Ken off as “mainstream,” thinking they had nothing in common beyond their Asian American identities—but soon, an unlikely friendship blossomed, with the two young men penning a screenplay together and discussing philosophy late into the night. It all came crashing down when Ken was murdered in a carjacking, sending Hsu into a decades-long spiral of grief and guilt. Ever since, Hsu has been trying to write Stay True , a wrenching memoir about who Ken was and what Ken taught him. At once a love letter, a coming-of-age tale, and an elegy, it’s one of the best books about friendship ever written.

The Man Who Could Move Clouds, by Ingrid Rojas Contreras

“They say the amnesias were a door to gifts we were supposed to have,” Rojas Contreras muses in this poetic memoir. After a head injury afflicted the author with amnesia, she learned that this had happened before: decades ago, her mother took a fall that left her with amnesia, and when she recovered, she gained access to “the secrets.” The first woman to know “the secrets,” Rojas Contreras’ mother inherited them from her father, known to the family as Nono, a Colombian community healer renowned for his ability to communicate with the dead, predict the future, heal the sick, and move the clouds. After Rojas Contreras’ accident, she and her mother traveled to Colombia to disinter Nono’s remains and tell his story. That quest, recounted here with mesmerizing prose and bracing insight, sent the women on a journey through the brutal colonial history that shaped their family and their nation. Rich in personal and political history, The Man Who Could Move Clouds is an effervescent read.

The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man, by Paul Newman

After six decades of Hollywood superstardom, it’s difficult to imagine that anything could remain unknown about Paul Newman . But that’s the particular magic trick of this memoir, assembled by way of a literary scavenger hunt. Between 1986 and 1991, Newman sat down with screenwriter Stewart Stern for a series of soul-baring interviews about his life and career. With the actor’s encouragement, Stern also recorded hundreds of hours worth of interviews with his friends, family, and colleagues. The whole enterprise was destined to become Newman’s authorized biography, but his feelings on the project soured; in 1998, he gathered the tapes in a pile and set fire to them. Luckily, Stern kept transcripts—over 14,000 pages worth. Now, those transcripts have been streamlined into this honest and unvarnished memoir, in which the actor speaks openly about his traumatic childhood, his lifelong struggle with alcoholism, and his tormenting self-doubt. But the highs are there too—like his 50-year marriage to actress Joanne Woodward—as well as the mysteries of making art, and the “imponderable of being a human being.” All told, the memoir is an extraordinary act of resurrection and reimagination.

Bad Sex, by Nona Willis Aronowitz

When Teen Vogue ’s sex columnist decided to end her marriage at 32 years old, chief among her complaints was “bad sex.” Newly divorced, Aronowitz went in search of good sex, but along the way, she discovered thorny truths about “the problem that has no name”—that despite the advances of feminism and the sexual revolution, true sexual freedom remains out of reach. Cultural criticism, memoir, and social history collide in Aronowitz’s no-nonsense investigation of all that ails young lovers, like questions about desire, consent, and patriarchy. It’s a revealing read bound to expand your thinking.

The High Sierra: A Love Story, by Kim Stanley Robinson

A titan of science fiction masters a new form in this winsome love letter to California’s Sierra Nevada mountain range. Constructed from an impassioned blend of memoir, history, and science writing, The High Sierra chronicles Robinson’s 100-plus trips to his beloved mountains, from his LSD-laced first encounter in 1973 to the dozens of ​​“rambling and scrambling” days to follow. From descriptions of the region’s multitudinous flora and fauna to practical advice about when and where to hike, this is as comprehensive a guidebook as any, complete with all the lucid ecstasy of nature writing greats like John Muir and Annie Dillard.

Year of the Tiger, by Alice Wong

In this mixed media memoir, disability activist Alice Wong outlines her journey as an advocate and educator. Wong was born with a form of progressive muscular dystrophy; as a young woman, she attended her dream college, but had to drop out when changes to Medicaid prevented her from retaining the aides she needed on an inaccessible campus. In one standout essay, Wong recounts her struggle to access Covid-19 vaccines as a high-risk individual. The author's rage about moving through an ableist world is palpable, but so too is her joy and delight about Lunar New Year, cats, family, and so much more. Innovative and informative, Year of the Tiger is a multidimensional portrait of a powerful thinker.

My Pinup, by Hilton Als

Has any book ever roved so far and wide in just 48 pages as My Pinup ? In this slim and brilliant memoir, Als explores race, power, and desire through the lens of Prince. Styling the legendary musician in the image of his lovers and himself, Als explores injustice on multiple levels, from racist record labels to the world's hostility to gay Black boys. “There was so much love between us,” the author muses. “Why didn’t anyone want us to share it?” These 48 meandering pages are difficult to describe, but trust us: My Pinup is a heady cocktail you won’t soon forget.

Novelist as a Vocation, by Haruki Murakami

In this winsome volume, one of our greatest novelists invites readers into his creative process. The result is a revealing self-portrait that answers many burning questions about its reclusive subject, like: where do Murakami’s strange and surreal ideas come from? When and how did he start writing? How does he view the role of novels in contemporary society? Novelist as a Vocation is a rare and welcome peek behind the curtain of a singular mind.

Bloomsbury Publishing Dirtbag, Massachusetts: A Confessional, by Isaac Fitzgerald

In this bleeding heart memoir, Fitzgerald peels back the layers of his extraordinary life. Dirtbag, Massachusetts opens with his hardscrabble childhood in a dysfunctional Catholic family, then spins out into the decades of jobs and identities that followed. From bartending at a biker bar to smuggling medical supplies to starring in porn films, it’s all led him to here and now: he’s still a work in progress, but gradually, he’s arriving at profound realizations about masculinity, family, and selfhood. Dirtbag, Massachusetts is the best of what memoir can accomplish. It's blisteringly honest and vulnerable, pulling no punches on the path to truth, but it always finds the capacity for grace and joy. “To any young men out there who aren’t too far gone,” Fitzgerald writes, “I say you’re not done becoming yourself.”

Pretty Baby, by Chris Belcher

As a financially strapped PhD student in Los Angeles, Belcher fell into an unusual side hustle: she began working as a pro-domme, fulfilling the fantasies of male clients aroused by feelings of shame and weakness. Belcher found unique power in the work as a queer woman, writing, “My clientele wanted a woman who would never want them in return, and at that, I excelled." But as she illuminates in this discerning memoir, the work had its drawbacks—namely, the brutality and blackmail of men. In a lucid examination of power, sexuality, and class, Belcher tells a gripping story about the performance of identity, inside and outside of the dungeon.

Also a Poet: Frank O'Hara, My Father, and Me, by Ada Calhoun

When Calhoun once went looking for a childhood toy, she stumbled upon a far greater treasure: dusty cassette tapes of interviews recorded by her father, art critic Peter Schjeldahl, who started but never completed a biography of the gone-too-soon poet Frank O’Hara. As a lifelong O’Hara fan, Calhoun gleefully committed to finishing what Schjeldahl started, but the task proved to be anything but easy. Like her father before her, Calhoun was stonewalled by Maureen O’Hara, the poet’s prickly sister and executor; the project also revealed the faultlines in her complicated bond with Schjeldahl, whom she longs to impress. In this heartfelt memoir, Calhoun recounts how going in search of O’Hara revealed so much more—like the painful complexities of parents, children, art, and ambition.

Because Our Fathers Lied, by Craig McNamara

How do we reckon with the sins of our parents? That’s the thorny question at the center of this moving and courageous memoir authored by the son of Robert S. McNamara, Kennedy’s architect of the Vietnam War. In this conflicted son’s telling, a complicated man comes into intimate view, as does the “mixture of love and rage” at the heart of their relationship. At once a loving and neglectful parent, the elder McNamara’s controversial lies about the war ultimately estranged him from his son, who hung Viet Cong flags in his childhood bedroom as a protest. The pursuit of a life unlike his father’s saw the younger McNamara drop out of Stanford and travel through South America on a motorcycle, leading him to ultimately become a sustainable walnut farmer. Through his own personal story of disappointment and disillusionment, McNamara captures an intergenerational conflict and a journey of moral identity.

The Unwritten Book, by Samantha Hunt

One of our most gifted practitioners of the short story makes her first foray into nonfiction with this shapeshifting volume. Hunt’s many-feathered subject is the things that haunt: art, the dead, the forest, things left unfinished. Her investigation centers on an unfinished novel written by her late father, a Reader's Digest editor; “the dead leave clues, and life is a puzzle of trying to read and understand these mysterious hints before the game is over,” she writes. As she considers the novel, she sifts through her relationship with her father, characterized as it was by his alcoholism and their shared love of story. Eerie, profound, and daring, this is a book only the inimitable Hunt could write.

Roc Lit 101 Shine Bright, by Danyel Smith

Memoir, criticism, and cultural history meet in this masterful study of the brilliant Black women who shaped American pop music, enriched by the author's own experiences and memories. Some of the figures here will be familiar, like Aretha Franklin and Whitney Houston, while others are long overdue for the reckoning Smith provides, from the Dixie Cups, a gone-too-soon sixties girl group, to the enslaved poet Phyllis Wheatley, who cleared a path for generations of descendants by singing her poems. In this soulful, enriching portrait of these extraordinary artists’ struggles and triumphs, Smith widens the canon to usher in new luminaries.

Lost & Found, by Kathryn Schultz

Eighteen months before Schultz’s father died after a long battle with cancer, she met the love of her life. It’s this painful dichotomy that sets the foundation for Lost & Found , a poignant memoir about how love and loss often coexist. Braiding her personal experiences together with psychological, philosophical and scientific insight, Schultz weaves a taxonomy of our losses, which can “encompass both the trivial as well as the consequential, the abstract and the concrete, the merely misplaced and the permanently gone.” But so too does she celebrate the act of discovery, from finding what we’ve mislaid to lucking into lasting love. Penetrating and profound, Lost & Found captures the extraordinary joys and sorrows of ordinary life.

Ecco Press South to America, by Imani Perry

The American South is often cast as a backwater cousin out of step with American ideals. In this vital cultural history, Perry argues otherwise, insisting the South is, in fact, the foundational heartland of America, an undeniable fulcrum around which our wealth and politics have always turned. Fusing memoir, reportage, and travelogue, Perry imparts Southern history alongside high-spirited interviews with modern-day Southerners from all walks of life. At once a love letter to “a land of big dreams and bigger lies” and a clarion call for change, South to America will change how you understand America’s past, present, and future.

Admissions, by Kendra James

When James enrolled at Connecticut’s prestigious Taft School at fifteen years old, she had no idea that, as the predominantly white boarding school’s first “Black American legacy student to graduate since 1891,” she would become its involuntary poster child for diversity. James’ hopes for a positive high school experience were dashed by “a swamp of microaggressions,” ranging from a student who accused her of stealing $20 to an article in the student newspaper blaming students of color for the segregation of campus. Determined that students after her wouldn’t suffer the same fate, she became an admissions officer specializing in diversity recruitment, but soon felt that she was “selling a lie for a living.” Frank and devastating in its candor, as well as incisive in its critique of elite academia, Admissions is a poignant coming-of-age memoir.

The Invisible Kingdom, by Meghan O'Rourke

“I got sick the way Hemingway says you go broke: ‘gradually and then suddenly,’” O’Rourke writes in The Invisible Kingdom , describing the beginning of her decades-long struggle with chronic autoimmune disease. In the late nineties, O’Rourke began suffering symptoms ranging from rashes to crushing fatigue; when she sought treatment, she became an unwilling citizen of a shadow world, where chronic illness sufferers are dismissed by doctors and alienated from their lives. In this elegant fusion of memoir, reporting, and cultural history, O’Rourke traces the development of modern Western medicine and takes aim at its limitations, advocating for a community-centric healthcare model that treats patients as people, not parts. At once a rigorous work of scholarship and a radical act of empathy, The Invisible Kingdom has the power to move mountains.

Read an exclusive interview with O'Rourkre here at Esquire.

Ancestor Trouble, by Maud Newton

Who are our ancestors to us, and what can they tell us about ourselves? In this riveting memoir, Newton goes in search of the answers to these questions, spelunking exhaustively through her frustrating and fascinating family tree. From an accused witch to a thirteen times-married man, her family tree abounds with stories that absorb and appall, but taxonomizing her family history doesn’t satisfy Newton’s hunger for meaning. Just what do the facts of a life tell us about who we are or where we come from, and what can our personal histories tell us about our national past? Carefully blending memoir and cultural criticism, Newton explores the cultural, scientific, and spiritual dimensions of ancestry, arguing for the transformational power of grappling with our inheritances.

Foreverland: On the Divine Tedium of Marriage, by Heather Havrilesky

No one writes about the agony and ecstasy of relationships with as much gutsy grace as Havrilesky, who has long counseled troubled lovers under the guise of Ask Polly . In Foreverland , Havrilesky turns the microscope on her own relationship, illuminating the joys and exasperations of her fifteen-year marriage. From parenting to quarantining together to bristling at her husband’s every loud sneeze, Havrilesky proves that forever is hard, wonderful work.

Read Havrilesky’s column about her husband here at Esquire.

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The Best Documentaries of 2022

The Best Books of 2022

The 10 Best TV Shows of 2022

The 25 Best Albums of 2022

The Best Nonfiction Books of 2022

The 23 Best Action Movies of 2022

The Best Comedy Specials of 2022

The Best Movies of 2022

The 45 Best Songs of 2022

The 2022 Esquire Spirit Awards

The Best Video Games of 2022 (So Far)

Best of the Year: The 15 Best Bios and Memoirs of 2022

From ruminations on addiction and recovery to genre-bending blends of biography and cultural criticism, these are 2022's best memoirs.

This list is part of our Best of the Year collection, an obsessively curated selection of our editors' and listeners' favorite audio in 2022. Check out The Best of 2022 to see our top picks in every category.

There are few stories more compelling or more intimately told than those soul-baring memoirs that seek not just to recount the experiences of one's own life but to draw some greater commentary on the big existential questions. What does it mean to be human? What is our purpose in being here? How much of who we are is purely self-determined? How much is an amalgamation of all those who have left an impact on us? Like all great autobiographies, the very best memoirs of 2022 muse on those questions, contemplating everything from the impact of art and culture on identity to navigating the labyrinthine worlds of grief and illness, addiction and recovery. Exceptional in both their prose and narration, these listens represent a few of the year's best memoirs.

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Constructing a Nervous System

Audible's Memoir of the Year, 2022 To call Margo Jefferson’s exquisite Constructing a Nervous System a memoir is a bit of a misnomer. After all, this skillfully crafted autobiography dances between genres so fluidly, leaping from the personal to deft cultural analysis in a dazzling display of narrative choreography. Jefferson constructs this stunner of a memoir through a literary lens, one that all but embodies the artists she riffs off of and analyzes, developing a story of the self through the creations, personalities, and perspectives of other artists. In a totally unique style that splinters the form of memoir altogether and frequently sees the text in dialogue with itself, this sharp listen illuminates that so much of who we are is built upon what we love and the things we encounter—be it the lasting presence of a late family member or a voice rising from a turntable. — Alanna M.

Told through the perspective of his nine-year-old self, Javier Zamora’s Solito is a moving account of his perilous, exhausting solo journey from El Salvador to the United States, where his parents awaited him. Zamora was entirely reliant on the support and compassion of his fellow migrants to survive—a story that is both his own and shared by many. Zamora is a poet first, and his delivery is pitch-perfect, lending a lyrical cadence and a well of emotion to an already beautifully crafted memoir. His voice, at times quivering, small, or uncertain, much like his young self, is wielded as an instrument of the story, not an appendix, reminding the listener of the human beings behind the statistics and political platforms. — A.M.

Did Ye Hear Mammy Died?

There are some sounds I consider synonymous with my Irish heritage: the slap of ghillies and the clack of reel shoes, the melodic jaunt of lilting or swell of an accordion, and the entrancing lull of a good story. The latter is embodied in Séamas O’Reilly’s tender retrospective on grief, family, and childhood, all amidst the din of the Troubles. However, a dry tearjerker this is not. Instead, whether musing on his father’s unmatched haggling abilities or offering asides on the oddities of death’s theatrics, O’Reilly brings so much joy and soul into his story that it’s impossible not to smile along. There is simply so much love, life, and heart in this rich memoir that you can almost hear it breathing. — A.M.

The Invisible Kingdom

In this deeply researched and insightful memoir, author Meghan O’Rourke illuminates how chronic illness has become the defining medical mystery of our times, and the source of a painful dissonance between the promises of modern medicine and the lived experiences of so many. Drawing on her own health issues as well as her background as a poet, O’Rourke weaves insights from doctors, patients, researchers, and other experts into a captivating and lyrical narrative. The current spotlight that long COVID has thrown on autoimmune and other “invisible” conditions is a central focus of the memoir, and many people will feel seen—and hopefully heard—by the eloquent voice O’Rourke gives to a monumental challenge. — Kat J.

Lost & Found

I’ve always found something peculiar about “loss” as a euphemism for death. Even still, it feels so apt—that sense that something is missing, at first an acute awareness and in time, an understanding of that absence’s permanence. Kathryn Schulz pulls on this thread in her gorgeous memoir Lost & Found , an account of the universality and ubiquity of those two most human experiences—love and death—as filtered through the loss of her father and the life she built with her wife. As someone muddling through a similar grief journey while trying to nurture a relationship of my own, I found a resonant comfort and hope in Schulz’s thoughts on bereavement and all the life there is still left to lead. — A.M.

What My Bones Know

As someone with a mood disorder, I find solace in listens that take new avenues for exploring the complicated and often isolating side effects of mental health conditions. Reconstructing her experiences with guided meditation and using recordings from real therapy sessions, Stephanie Foo takes a highly journalistic approach to dissecting her CPTSD diagnosis in this vulnerable and intelligent memoir. Unpacking how and why her trauma affects her the way it does, What My Bones Know is not only uniquely suited for audio but constructs a creative audio experience that challenged me as a listener in unexpected and illuminating ways. — Haley H.

Quite the Contrary

This juicy and culturally significant listen, which happens to be the memoir of one of my Audible colleagues, is one of the best I’ve had the pleasure of gulping down. In Quite the Contrary, Yvonne Durant gradually unfurls the mother of all cocktail-party stories—the intimate account of her love affair with jazz legend Miles Davis—against her equally compelling career trajectory as a rare Black woman making waves in advertising’s competitive heyday. Witty, poignant, and funny, Durant lets us into secret spaces of celebrity, culture, and bygone New York, unforgettably brought to life by narrator Allyson Johnson. — K.J.

His Name Is George Floyd (Pulitzer Prize Winner)

This landmark biography from Washington Post reporters Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa is built on more than 400 interviews conducted in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death, offering the most complete portrait of Floyd’s life and legacy to date. Star narrator Dion Graham pairs with the authors to create a powerhouse performance that moves from Floyd’s ancestral roots in the tobacco fields of North Carolina to the housing projects of Houston and his death at the hands of Minneapolis police, paying homage to his life while revealing its deep intersections with America’s history of racism and inequality. — H.H.

To fans of Brandon Stanton's street photography project and bestselling book Humans of New York, Stephanie Johnson—better known as Tanqueray—is nothing short of a superstar. So, to finally hear the septuagenarian share more unfiltered, incredible stories about being a burlesque dancer in 1970s New York City—and many other necessary reinventions to survive life's ups and downs—in her own feisty, raunchy, badass way is a milestone storytelling event that is at times hilarious as well as heartbreaking. Millions fell in love with her indomitable spirit by reading about her life on social media, but listening to this legendary lady is unforgettable. As she says: "Make room for Tanqueray, because here I come." — Jerry P.

The Book of Baraka

Told in collaboration with renowned journalist Jelani Cobb, The Book of Baraka combines poetry and prose with the history that helped to shape Ras Baraka, the current mayor of Newark, New Jersey, into the man he is today. It’s the story of a young Black boy’s coming of age as the son of one of the most influential and controversial poets and revolutionaries of the era but also of how that boy would later shape his city—first as a poet, then as an educator, and now, as mayor. As a former resident of Newark myself, I have nothing but praise for Baraka’s accomplishments. But don’t just take it from me. His is a story you definitely don’t want to miss out on, and it should be heard from the mayor himself. — Michael C.

Full disclosure: I’m a sucker for any story involving animals, particularly when those little critters are of the motley variety. Needless to say, I was drawn to Laurie Zaleski’s Funny Farm immediately. An account of running a rescue for beasties ranging from cats to horses? That ridiculously cute cover? Sign me up. What I didn’t expect, however, was a truly affecting memoir that extended far beyond barnyard antics, exploring the depths of Zaleski’s difficult childhood, her mother’s remarkable strength, and carrying on a mission inherited. So sure, come for the adorable furry and feathered friends, but stay for the author’s graceful, heartrending tribute to her late mother and a testament to the redemptive power of caring for others, four-legged or otherwise. — A.M.

Fatty Fatty Boom Boom

If you’re a fan of true crime podcasts, you probably already know Rabia Chaudry’s euphonic voice—as host of both Undisclosed and Rabia and Ellyn Solve the Case , her skills behind the microphone are well documented. Chaudry's gifts for performance and storytelling shine the clearer in her deeply personal debut memoir. So named in reference to Chaudry’s childhood nickname, Fatty Fatty Boom Boom is an immensely relatable listen for anyone who has ever battled body image issues, a rumination on those most complicated relationships (with both food and family), and a love letter to Pakistani cuisine. — A.M.

Also a Poet

A true blend of biography and memoir, Ada Calhoun’s Also a Poet is a fascinating gem of a listen. Calhoun, the author behind nonfiction listens like Why We Can’t Sleep and St. Marks Is Dead , turns her eye toward a subject matter far closer to home. In examining her strained, complicated relationship with her father, the acclaimed art critic Peter Schjeldahl, Calhoun comes across an unexpected connection between them: the late bohemian poet Frank O’Hara. Twisting in its exploration of family, legacy, and art, this Audible Original—which features exclusive archival audio of artistic giants—is an evocative act of catharsis. — A.M.

Corrections in Ink

Journalist Keri Blakinger has dedicated much of her career to shining a light on the stark realities of criminal justice in America. Her ongoing work with nonprofit news collective The Marshall Project aims to provide a better quality of life for prisoners, with Blakinger advocating for inmate safety and well-being while underscoring their oft-disregarded humanity. But Blakinger’s focus isn’t merely academic—as detailed in Corrections in Ink , she’s lived through the prison system herself. Employing well-crafted, blazing prose and narration marked by an uncommon frankness, she recounts her battle with addiction and subsequent incarceration. Listening to her story is sometimes difficult, painful even, but that’s part of its power—this is a courageous, contemplative memoir poised to change the conversation. — A.M.

Dirtbag, Massachusetts

Kidlit author Isaac Fitzgerald rocketed into the capital-L literary landscape with this astounding memoir-in-essays, its instantly iconic title matched by an unforgettable voice. With his origins firmly in Massachusetts, Fitzgerald grew up with a love of literature and a bohemian sensibility that transcended his rough-and-tumble background and its narrow presentation of masculinity. That foundation serves him well in this fiercely honest, vulnerable, and rowdy collection of reminiscences that range from Boston to Burma (now Myanmar), connecting the dots from Fitzgerald’s former lives as an altar boy, fat kid, and small-time criminal to lightning-bolt musings on religion, race, body image, and family. Both literally and literarily speaking, his voice is one to savor. — K.J.

Best of the Year: The 14 Best Celebrity Memoirs of 2022

The birth of "Quite the Contrary"

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The best memoirs and biographies of 2022

Heartfelt memoirs from Richard E Grant and Viola Davis, childhood tales of religious dogma, and vivid insights into Agatha Christie and John Donne

The best books of 2022

C elebrity memoirs often follow the same trajectory: a difficult childhood followed by early professional failure, then dazzling success and redemption. But this year has yielded a handful of autobiographies from famous types determined to mix things up. Richard E Grant’s vivacious and heartfelt A Pocketful of Happiness (Gallery) recounts a year spent caring for his late wife, Joan Washington, who was diagnosed with lung cancer shortly before Christmas in 2020, and the “head-and-heart-exploding overwhelm” that followed. The book interweaves hospital appointments with memories of the couple’s courtship plus showbiz stories of Grant at the Golden Globes, or hijinks on the set of Star Wars. This juxtaposition of glamour and grief shouldn’t work, but it does.

Minnie Driver’s Managing Expectations (Manila) comprises spry and amusing autobiographical essays that detail pivotal moments in the actor’s life. These include her experience of becoming a mother, cutting off all her hair on a family holiday in France and the time her father sent her home to England from Barbados alone, aged 11, including a stopover at a Miami hotel, as punishment for being rude to his girlfriend (Driver got her revenge by buying up half the gift shop on her dad’s credit card). She also recalls the disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein bemoaning her lack of sex appeal, which she notes was rich from a man “whose shirts were always aggressively encrusted with egg/tuna fish/mayo”.

Alan Rickman’s Madly, Deeply (Canongate) diaries provide insight into the inner life of the late actor who, despite his many successes, frets over roles turned down and rails at the perceived ineptitude of script writers, directors and co-stars. He nonetheless keeps glittering company, hobnobbing with musicians, prime ministers and Hollywood megastars, and almost single-handedly keeps the tills ringing at the Ivy. And while he seethes at critics’ reviews of his own work, his assessments of less-than-perfect films and plays are so deliciously scathing, they deserve a book of their own.

In Finding Me (Coronet), the actor Viola Davis gives a clear-eyed account of her deprived childhood and her rise to fame, along with the violence, abuse and racism she endured along the way. The book is not so much a triumphant tale of overcoming adversity as a howl of fury at the injustice of it all. Davis may now be able to survey her career from a place of Oscar-winning privilege, but she doesn’t hesitate in calling out her industry and its ingrained racial bias, which leads to white actors landing plum roles and “relegates [Black actors] to best friends, to strong, loudmouth, sassy lawyers and doctors”. In The Light We Carry (Viking), the follow-up to her bestselling memoir Becoming, Michelle Obama also touches on the impossible-to-meet expectations that dog anyone trying to make it in a world that sees them as different, or deficient. “I happen to be well acquainted with the burdens of representation and the double standards for excellence that steepen the hills so many of us are trying to climb,” she writes. “It remains a damning fact of life that we ask too much of those who are marginalised and too little of those who are not.”

Away from the world of global fame and its attendant scrutiny, the journalist Chitra Ramaswamy’s touching memoir Homelands (Canongate) documents the author’s friendship with 97-year-old Henry Wuga, who escaped Nazi persecution as a teenager and began a new life in Glasgow. Interwoven with Wuga’s recollections is Ramaswamy’s own family story – she is the daughter of Indian immigrant parents – through which she digs deep into matters of identity, belonging and the meaning of home. Similar themes are explored in Ira Mathur’s multilayered Love the Dark Days (Peepal Tree), which, set in India, Britain and the Caribbean, reads like a fictional family saga as it leaps back and forth in time. The book charts the lives of the author’s wealthy, dysfunctional forebears against a backdrop of patriarchal hegemony and a collapsing empire.

The Last Days (Ebury) by Ali Millar and Sins of My Father (Weidenfeld & Nicolson) by Lily Dunn each tell harrowing stories of families torn apart by religious dogma. Millar, who grew up as a Jehovah’s Witness on the Scottish borders, reflects on a childhood haunted by predictions of Armageddon and blighted by her eating disorder. As an adult she marries, within the church, a controlling man and has a baby, though at 30 she makes her escape and is “disfellowshipped”, meaning she is cut off for ever from her family. Meanwhile, Dunn recalls losing her father to a commune in India presided over by the cult leader Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, where disciples were encouraged to “live in love”, meaning they could engage in guilt-free sex. Dunn’s book is her attempt to pin down this charismatic, mercurial and unreliable figure and the ripple effects of his actions on those closest to him. In Matt Rowland Hill’s scabrously funny Original Sins (Chatto & Windus), it is the author who is the agent of chaos. The son of evangelical Christians, Hill shoots heroin at the funeral of a friend who died from an overdose, and tries to score drugs on a visit to Bethlehem. Were his account a novel, you might accuse it of being too far-fetched.

In Kit de Waal’s first autobiographical work, Without Warning and Only Sometimes (Tinder Press), the author recalls how she and her four siblings would go to bed hungry while their father blew his earnings on a new suit, and her mother would work off her rage by collecting empty milk bottles and throwing them at a wall in the back yard. After a bout of depression in her teens, De Waal eventually found comfort and escape in literature. Her book is a brilliant evocation of the times in which she lived, when children learned to make their own entertainment and adults didn’t talk about their feelings, and a funny and tender portrait of a complicated family.

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The Crane Wife (Viking), by the American author CJ Hauser, began life as a confessional essay about the time she travelled to the gulf coast of Texas to study whooping cranes 10 days after breaking off her engagement. Published in the Paris Review, the essay blew up online, prompting Hauser to expand her thoughts on love and relationships into this thoughtful and fitfully funny book. Across 17 confessional essays, we find her furtively spreading her grandparents’ ashes at their old house in Martha’s Vineyard, contemplating breast reduction surgery and reflecting on her relationships with a high-school boyfriend and a divorcee who is clearly still in love with his ex.

Finally, some excellent biographies. Agatha Christie: A Very Elusive Woman (Hodder & Stoughton) by Lucy Worsley is a riveting portrait of the queen of crime viewed through a feminist lens. The book acknowledges Christie’s flaws, most notably in her views on race, while portraying her as ahead of her time in putting women at the centre of her stories and showing how older women “have more to offer the world than meets the eye”. Super-Infinite (Faber), winner of this year’s Baillie Gifford prize, is a biography of the 17th-century preacher and poet John Donne by Katherine Rundell, the children’s novelist and Renaissance scholar. Ten years in the writing, the book approaches its subject with wit and vivacity, bringing to life Donne’s inner world through his verse.

Jonathan Freedland’s The Escape Artist (John Murray) is a remarkable account of the life of Rudolf Vrba, a prisoner at Auschwitz who was put to work in “Kanada”, a store of belongings removed from inmates which revealed that the line fed to them was a lie: they were not there to be resettled but murdered. Vrba and his friend Fred Wetzler pledged to escape and tell the world about the Nazis’ industrialised murder, hiding beneath a woodpile for three days before slipping through the fence to freedom. The horror of this story lies not just in its account of “cold-blooded extermination” but in the slowness of authorities to react to the Vrba-Wetzler report, which laid out the workings of Auschwitz, complete with maps showing the chambers. Freedland recalls the words of the French-Jewish philosopher Raymond Aron, who, when asked about the Holocaust, said: “I knew, but I didn’t believe it. And because I didn’t believe it, I didn’t know.”

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The best biographies of 2022: From Queen Elizabeth II to John Donne

The Queen’s death forced us all to confront the twists and turns that make up a life – and this year’s best biographies did the same

This year, Queen Elizabeth II turned her whole nation into amateur biographers. First, on her Platinum Jubilee, then, after her death, we scratched our heads, trying to work out who this enigmatic woman had been, and what her life had meant for all of ours. It all felt rather ineffable. “Not as easy as it looks, is it!” cried the professional biographers, whose efforts, royal or not, we will now read more forgivingly, realising they are studies in unavoidable failure. For how can we do justice to another life when we cannot reliably tell the story of our own?  That is one of many ideas that leap, flea-like, out of the year’s best memoir, A N Wilson’s Confessions (Bloomsbury, £20). “My sense of myself is of a multiple personality… I can entertain quite contradictory opinions, sometimes feeling intensely reactionary and conservative and, at one and the same moment, quite the opposite…” With winning honesty and a novelist’s skill, Wilson shapes the messiness of his first three decades into a tight, funny yarn, raising the ghost of a Britain in which most people bathed only once a week, and gave off “an animal smell… not specific, not underarm or bad breath or any of the cruder odours, but a very mild version of what hits the nose when passing a butcher’s shop”. Without Warning and Only Sometimes (Tinder, £16.99) is Kit de Waal’s addictive memoir of her chilly, hungry childhood in 1970s Birmingham, her dapper West Indian father, and her sad Irish mother, who was in thrall to the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and saved up milk bottles so she could smash them against the wall in frustration. In Manchester, 20 years earlier, the novelist Howard Jacobson was born, “like Schleswig-Holstein... into the middle of a schism”: his father “had the big Russian soul thing”, but his mother, “being Lithuanian, rubbished everything”. His wisecracking Mother’s Boy (Jonathan Cape, £18.99) undercuts everything with his Jewish self-doubt. Childhood is the best part of most memoirs, and the worst part of most biographies – perhaps because ­coming-of-age holds the most important, but the most frustratingly private, truths about a person. To compensate, the conventional cradle-to-grave “lives”, such as Miranda Seymour’s Jean Rhys biography, I Used to Live Here Once (William Collins, £25), expend too much of the reader’s patience on scene-setting. Keiron Pim’s Endless Flight (Granta, £25) took a subject that was at least less familiar – Joseph Roth, alcoholic author of The Radetzky March, whose idea of a “diet” was to have just wine instead of schnapps – but the book is 25 per cent longer than it needs to be.  Katherine Rundell’s poppy, snappy celebration of John Donne, Super-Infinite (Faber, £16.99), was thus a breath of fresh air. Her diction hops irritatingly from archaic (“beamish and over-saucing”) to modern (“internal baggage”), but she succeeds in making Donne dan­ger­ous again (he sits in the poetic canon like “a tooth in a basket of flowers”), and convinces us that, for the metaphysical poet, “thinking fast and hard [was] a sensual joy akin to sex”.

“Just the thinking for me, please!” Donne’s admirer, T S Eliot, seems to have been screaming inside (at least until he married his secretary Valerie, and wrote her filthy limericks). In this, The Waste Land’s centenary year, almost as much ink was spilt on Eliot as on the late Queen, with Robert Crawford’s doorstopper, Eliot After The Waste Land (Jonathan Cape, £25), Matthew Hollis’s eccentric biography of the poem itself, The Waste Land (Faber, £25), and Lyndall Gordon’s sensitive The Hyacinth Girl (Virago, £25), a study of Emily Hale, Eliot’s childhood sweetheart in America, kept dangling on a thread by his intimate letters to her. We are left with a depressing image of an emotional wreck, who sought art as “an escape from personality”. The John le Carré publishing juggernaut lumbered in hot pursuit, with two new books offering (at times, revoltingly) intimate access to Britain’s favourite spy novelist, two years after his death. The Secret Heart (Mudlark, £25), by his mistress, writing under the pseudonym Suleika Dawson, is a fevered, Mills & Boon-ish memoir, where sex must be had in “bouts” and no image is too alarming: he “drove himself into me like a ploughshare”. If she set out to glamorise le Carré, it is not a success: his dialogue is lame, and his conceit that cheating on his wife is a substitute for espionage – paying for his mistress’s treats out of a “reptile fund” – is so pathetic, it might cost you an idol. Nothing in his letters, A Private Spy (Viking, £30), will restore it, but at least the words are by le Carré (who, unlike Dawson, can write), and for all his pathological unreliability, there is a truthfulness to seeing his life unfold without the benefit of hindsight. The priapism of another artist is celebrated in A Life of Picasso, Vol IV: The Minotaur Years, 1933-1943 (Jonathan Cape, £35), by the late John Richardson. The gossip is irresistible, but Richardson has imbibed uncritically his subject’s wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am world­­view: Picasso’s mistresses are simply “termagant”, “boring” or “madwoman”. Could any painter be less like Picasso than dear old cosy ­ Constable (W&N, £25)? In fact, as James Hamilton’s classy biography reminds us, Constable was a revolutionary, too. The paradox is that, politically, he was an arch-reactionary, who refused to leave England, likened a rival’s painting to “a large cow turd”, and was only properly appreciated by the Parisians.

It was in avant-garde Paris that Diaghilev set out “to ravish the world” with the Ballets Russes, and Rupert Christiansen’s sparkling Diaghilev’s Empire (Faber, £25) shows how the bulldog-faced impresario did it, despite being, in his own words “a great charlatan”. There’s not a dull sentence; I was glad to learn that the top echelon of Paris society is called “the gratin”. Across the Channel, in 1905, a very different kind of revolutionary slithered up the greasy pole to become Britain’s youngest ever peer: Lord Northcliffe. The Daily Mail founder, born Alfred Harmsworth, gets the Andrew Roberts “Great Man” treatment in The Chief (Simon & Schuster, £25), a delightfully partisan biography of a much-maligned man who had a genius for knowing what people wanted. As Harmsworth declared, “Health and sex and money are always news.” It reminds us that 99 per cent of people in the past were not the highbrows one reads about. And we don’t even get the highbrows right. Andrea Wulf’s Magnificent Rebels (John Murray, £25) resurrects the “Jena Set” – Goethe, Schiller, the Schlegels, Nov­alis – who breathed romance back into nature after the Enlightenment had reduced it to “a monotonous machine”. They invented our modern obsession with “self”, yet in Britain are barely known compared with their avowed disciples, Coleridge, Blake, Wordsworth et al. In Wulf’s page-turner, the Germans are as badly behaved as the later Bloomsberries, and surprisingly likeable: “My novel is like a stocking someone knits away at so slowly it gets grubby,” complains Goethe. Metaphysical Animals by Clare Mac Cumhaill and Rachael Wiseman (Chatto & Windus, £25) does a similar trick, this time in postwar Oxford, where Iris Murdoch, Philippa Foot, Elizabeth Anscombe and Mary Midgley managed to wrestle moral philo­sophy out of the arid dead-end embodied by A J Ayer, who taught in the 1930s that good and evil were unreal. The Holocaust left that notion in ashes – “Nothing can ever be the same again,” said Foot.  Daisy Dunn’s Not Far From Brideshead (W&N, £20) is less satisfactory. What should be a dynamite intellectual history of how three great classicists – Gilbert Murray, Maurice Bowra and E R Dodds – shaped our modern world gets mired in the sort of creamy nostalgia that Evelyn Waugh found so embarrassing when he came to revise Brideshead Revisited in 1959.

Iris Murdoch was, accidentally, a radicalising influence on her tutee Rose Dugdale, subject of Sean O’Driscoll’s riveting Heiress, Rebel, Vigilante, Bomber (Sandycove, £18.99). Dugdale went from bored debutante to IRA terrorist, masterminding in 1974 what was then the most expensive art heist in history. She also dropped milk churns full of explosives on a police station in Strabane from a helicopter, but they failed to go off. These days, if bombs go off, Lucy Easthope’s phone starts ringing. In her unforgettable memoir, When the Dust Settles (Hodder, £20), the “disaster expert” reveals how she helped governments deal with 9/11, 7/7, the Boxing Day tsunami, Grenfell – the list goes on. It manages, miraculously, to be an uplifting book, if only because you know how much worse things would be without brave people such as Easthope. You wouldn’t say that of Chips Channon. “The rows of dead emaciated bodies all looked like Margot Asquith naked!” wrote the MP and social climber after Buchenwald's liberation. Henry ‘Chips’ Channon: The Diaries: 1943-57 (Cor­n­er­stone, £35) reveal him at his most grotesquely un­like­able – “a bitch du premier ordre” – but it feels like witchcraft that we can know so intimately someone we never met. By his diary, “my old confessor”, Chips is raised from the dead.

For 15% off any of these books, call 0844 871 1514 or use the checkout code XMAS at books.telegraph.co.uk/XMASbooks

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Nonfiction Books » Best Biographies » The Best Memoirs and Autobiographies

The best memoirs: the 2022 nbcc autobiography shortlist, recommended by marion winik.

Gay Bar: Why We Went Out by Jeremy Atherton Lin

Autobiography is evolving; increasingly we find the field dominated by 'genre-fluid' books that plait memoir together with strands of cultural criticism, history, journalism or even poetry. Here, Marion Winik , the memoirist and critic, talks us through the five books that have been shortlisted in the National Book Critic's Circle autobiography category—and describes the face of memoir in 2022.

Interview by Cal Flyn , Deputy Editor

A Little Devil in America: Notes In Praise Of Black Performance by Hanif Abdurraqib

A Farewell to Gabo and Mercedes: A Son's Memoir of Gabriel García Márquez and Mercedes Barcha by Rodrigo Garcia

A Ghost in the Throat by Doireann Ní Ghríofa

Concepcion: An Immigrant Family’s Fortunes by Albert Samaha

1 A Little Devil in America: Notes In Praise Of Black Performance by Hanif Abdurraqib

2 gay bar: why we went out by jeremy atherton lin, 3 a farewell to gabo and mercedes: a son's memoir of gabriel garcía márquez and mercedes barcha by rodrigo garcia, 4 a ghost in the throat by doireann ní ghríofa, 5 concepcion: an immigrant family’s fortunes by albert samaha.

W hat an exciting shortlist for this year’s National Book Critics Circle autobiography award category. As the chair of the judges, can you give us an overview—what does autobiography and memoir look like in 2022?

Yes, I think ‘a blend of memoir and cultural criticism’ is probably a reasonable way of describing the first book that made the shortlist. This is Hanif Abdurraqib’s A Little Devil in America: Notes In Praise Of Black Performance.

I think I can reveal that this book was considered by more than one committee at the NBCC, because—yes—it is as much cultural criticism as it is autobiography. One of the things that’s important to us is not to let books like that fall through the cracks. We might say, well, it’s not really a memoir, and they might say, well, it’s not really criticism. So we’ve made it our job to embrace those hybrid books. I mean, there was almost a little turf war over this one.

Abdurraqib’s voice is so powerful and personal that even when he’s writing about Whitney Houston or Michael Jackson, it still reads as personal storytelling. It’s certainly not what we ordinarily think of as music criticism. His discussion of each entertainer is very much in terms of his culture and life story.

There was one essay that the committee went crazy for: ‘It Is Safe to Say I Have Lost Many Games of Spades.’ It’s about playing cards in a van with a group of other writers traveling to an event down South. It’s about the different rules and traditions for the game in black communities all over the country. It’s also about friendship. He says that the way each of his friends plays Spades brings out the thing he most loves about each of them. That’s a lovely piece of memoir right there.

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As both a writer and reader of this genre, I’m obsessed with interesting formal constraints and decisions about language. Abdurraqib is a poet, and brings a lyricism and often a sort of incantatory style to his writing. One essay is based on a kind of poem called a ‘crown of sonnets’, where the last line of each sonnet becomes the first line of the next one. He did that with sections of an essay about Mike Tyson. That enchanted me. He also has five essays with the same title: ‘On Times I Have Forced Myself to Dance.’ And ‘Sixteen Ways of Looking at Blackface’ clearly gets its spinal column from Wallace Stevens.

That makes sense. The second shortlisted title is Jeremy Atherton Lin’s Gay Bar: Why We Went Out . It’s described as “a transatlantic tour of the hangouts that marked his life, with each club, pub and dive revealing itself as a palimpsest of queer history.” What did you admire about this book?

Oh, it’s really good. First of all, it’s very brave and candid. It has a lot of raw sex writing in it, which is attention-grabbing and very well handled. It’s a love story, really; he describes how he met his partner, whom he calls ‘Famous Blue Raincoat’ or just ‘Famous’, in a bar when they were really very young. It’s the story of him and Famous, their coming of age, and their sex life over decades, threaded all through the book. So it’s the furthest thing from a dry history of gay bars. It’s very experiential, and takes you inside gay culture in a rare way. He evokes the settings so powerfully. It’s a great way of telling history.

Do you remember the Alia Volz book we talked about last year , Home Baked ? About her mother selling hash brownies in San Francisco?

So the cities featured in this book, London, Los Angeles and San Francisco, come to life in a similar way as in that book. You feel there’s a really vivid capturing of those cultural centers at certain times in their history.

The author came of age in the 1990s, but Aids plays a smaller role in the book than I might have expected or feared. It’s put in its place by all that’s happened before and since. It’s put in a historical context, and that’s kind of liberating I think

I know when people are selling nonfiction books at the moment, publishers often want a personal link to the story. I suppose this is where the trend towards genre fluidity might come in, and I guess it also reflects the way that so-called ‘lived experience’ is increasingly respected and prioritised.

Thanks. The third book is Rodrigo García’s A Farewell To Gabo And Mercedes: A Son’s Memoir. Rodrigo Garcia is Gabriel García Márquez’s son; this is a short but well-formed memoir about the deaths of his parents.

We talked a lot about two aspects of this book. First: is it a handicap that it’s so short? Or is it beautifully compressed, and perfect at this length? Obviously we decided it was the latter. We also talked about whether this book is important because his father was so famous—is that why we liked it?—or was it because it captured something universal about losing both parents? Again, we decided the latter, though Garcia does honor the loss to the world and to his father’s many fans, as well as his own.

Next up, we have Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s A Ghost in the Throat . I do love this strange little book. It weaves the story of how she subsumes herself in early motherhood with a parallel story of an Irish noblewoman and poet. Can you tell us a bit more about it?

People really can’t decide what genre this book is in, probably more so than any of the other books. They even tried to say it was fiction! Turf war, part two! I think there’s no doubt it belongs in autobiography. Ní Ghríofa interweaves the earthbound realities of her life as a young mother with her literary obsession with an 18th-century poem. It’s quite remarkable.

She explains that she knew this poem from it being taught to her at school, and then she encountered it at a different time in her life. She had never realised before that the woman poet was a young mom at the time she was widowed; I think she says that this was the detail that pushed her over the edge into obsession. She has a xeroxed copy under her pillow that she pulls out and reads in stolen moments. She researches everything that can be known about this woman’s life (which is both more than you’d think and less than she wants), and she makes her own translation from the Irish, which is included in the book.

“‘Autobiography’ is a pretty old-fashioned word for this category. I think it’s closer to what people now call ‘creative nonfiction’”

The poem itself is almost kind of goth in its details. She drinks her dead husband’s blood, she takes his dead horse’s skull and buries it in her fireplace. It’s also unbelievably romantic, quite in contrast to the diaper pails and floor-mopping and everything else she has going on. But the thing is that she embraces both. She is not downtrodden by her duties as a mother.

There’s an interesting discussion over whether this is a feminist book, because she does kind of love her dishwashing and breast-pumping and such. It has been more traditional in feminism to package up domestic duties as part of female oppression. That’s not really Ní Ghríofa’s approach at all. She finds a beauty in the duties of care. She’s a romantic in the traditional sense. She finds an intensity and romance in her own life.

It has this echoing refrain: “This is a female text.” She applies it to real texts, like the book itself and the poem that she translates, but also to other less obvious tasks. She talks about the idea of the fruits of female labour disappearing, or undoing themselves as fast as you do them—the clean becoming unclean, and so on. I felt this book very powerfully, although I find it hard to sum up the thrust of its ‘argument’.

You know how there was a turn in feminist thinking about sex? Instead of being exploited or ashamed or whatever, you could be  ‘sex positive’ and proud of it. This book is, like, housework positive.

I love that. There’s a bit about how she donates her breast milk until she’s too ill to continue. She’s sapping herself dry for a baby she’s never met. It’s a very pure image of femininity as self-abnegation.

Maybe that brings us to the final book on the shortlist: Albert Samaha’s Concepcion: An Immigrant Family’s Fortunes. It’s the story of the author’s Filipino-American family, and it traces his ancestry back through Filipino history.

There’s a lot we admired about this book. It’s an undertold story. Someone on the committee described it as a collective memoir, shared by unheard people from this background. In addition to the complicated history of the islands starting with Magellan, he includes several wonderful personal stories.  His uncle Spanky who was literally a rock star in the Philippines became a baggage handler at the airport in California. His mother who darts in and out of the story, is a Trumper and a QAnon follower. She gets catfished by a guy from an online dating site. So all these different narrative threads energize each other, and benefit from the contrast.

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In some ways it’s like Gay Bar , in that it is a long cultural history mixed with a personal story. And it succeeds because the writing is so personal and powerful and vivid. It’s part of a more general flowering of Filipino writers right now.

How would you characterise his literary style?

I’d say he writes in a very accomplished narrative nonfiction style—longform journalism laced with personal storytelling—including moments of high irony and humor. He’s not as lyrical as the poets Abdurraqib and Ní Ghríofa, but the task he sets himself makes that an asset. There’s a lot of actual information and education delivered by this book, more like what you’d expect from a title on the nonfiction list—and there’s that hybrid thing again, the leitmotif of this list.

Fantastic. What happens next?

So now the members of all six NBCC committees are reading all the shortlisted books from every category. Then we will meet on Zoom, and at that point it’s all about hearing the voices of the people who weren’t involved in the shortlisting process. As the chair of the autobiography committee, I’m very interested to see how the five books are going to roll with the larger group. Those final discussions are so interesting and important. The best part of being on the NBCC, really. Then we will vote on the winners, and the ceremony will be on the 17 March , preceded by a finalists reading where we will hear two minutes each of all 37 books! I’m particularly excited about that.

February 18, 2022

Five Books aims to keep its book recommendations and interviews up to date. If you are the interviewee and would like to update your choice of books (or even just what you say about them) please email us at [email protected]

Marion Winik

University of Baltimore professor Marion Winik  is the author of The Big Book of the Dead and winner of the 2019 Towson Prize for Literature. Among her ten other books are First Comes Love and Above Us Only Sky . Her essays have appeared in publications including The New York Times Magazine and The Sun . A board member of the National Book Critics Circle, she writes book reviews for People, Newsday, The Washington Post , and Kirkus Reviews . She was a commentator on NPR for fifteen years; her honours include an NEA Fellowship in Creative Nonfiction.

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30 Best Biography Books You Should Have Read by Now

By Jennifer Brozak and Tria Wen

Updated: May 23, 2024

From your favorite figures to hidden stories you've never heard, this list of biographies will keep you glued to the page.

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The best biographies help us learn about and contemplate the world. By reading about pivotal figures in history, we better understand the cultural context that we live in today. In learning the life stories of people who have faced different challenges and circumstances than we have, we can gain a deeper understanding of others, develop more empathy, and help forge our own paths. And while  autobiographies  and  memoirs  can lend an air of intimacy, biography books give you a more unbiased view of a person and an era.

Whether you’re an avid reader of biographies looking for lesser-known titles or are new to the genre and want an introduction to the best of the best, we’ve got something for you. We took a cross section of critically acclaimed and reader-recommended books that shine a light on some of the most fascinating, hidden, or influential stories you’ll want to learn about. These picks rank not just among the best  nonfiction books  but also the  best books  of all time, and you’re definitely in for a treat.

1. Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own by Eddie S. Glaude (2020)

2. The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk by Randy Shilts (1982)

3. The Crusades of Cesar Chavez: A Biography by Miriam Pawel (2014)

4. Alice Walker: A Life by Evelyn C. White (2004)

5. In Love and Struggle: The Revolutionary Lives of James and Grace Lee Boggs by Stephen M. Ward (2016)

6. The Brontë Myth by Lucasta Miller (2001)

7. Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball’s Last Hero by David Maraniss (2006)

8. Triumph: The Untold Story of Jesse Owens and Hitler’s Olympics by Jeremy Schaap (2007)

9. Heartbeat of Struggle: The Revolutionary Life of Yuri Kochiyama by Diane Carol Fujino (2005)

10. Gandhi: The Years That Changed the World, 1914–1948 by Ramachandra Guha (2018)

11. Lafayette in the Somewhat United States by Sarah Vowell (2015)

12. The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo by Tom Reiss (2012)

13. Wong Kar-Wai: Auteur of Time by Stephen Teo (2005)

14. Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch by Sally Bedell Smith (2012)

15. A Hope More Powerful Than the Sea: One Refugee’s Incredible Story of Love, Loss, and Survival by Melissa Fleming (2017)

16. Invisible: The Forgotten Story of the Black Woman Lawyer Who Took Down America’s Most Powerful Mobster by Stephen L. Carter (2018)

17. Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg by Irin Carmon and Shana Knizhnik (2015)

18. Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston by Valerie Boyd (2003)

19. The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell (1791)

20. Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin (2005)

21. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot (2001)

22. John Adams by David McCullough (2002)

23. Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson (2011)

24. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by James Agee (2001)

25. Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation by Kate Bornstein and S. Bear Bergman (2010)

26. Ten Days a Madwoman: The Daring Life and Turbulent Times of the Original “Girl” Reporter, Nelly Bly by Deborah Noyes (2017)

27. Churchill: A Life by Martin Gilbert (1991)

28. Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson (2007)

29. Eleanor Roosevelt: The Early Years by Blanche Wieson Cook (1992)

30. Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow (2020)

In these tumultuous times, average citizens and leaders alike have been turning to the words of James Baldwin, one of the greatest writers on race in America . In this recent biography of Baldwin, author Eddie S. Glaude weaves Baldwin’s life and words from newly surfaced interviews with the state of racial tension in America today. In doing so, he shines Baldwin’s insight from the past onto current events and lights a path toward a better future. Begin Again was named one of the best books of the year by Time , the Washington Post , and the Chicago Tribune , and it won the prestigious Stowe Prize.

You may have seen the 2008 film Milk starring Sean Penn, but this biography goes deeper into Harvey Milk’s personal life and career, and wider in applying Milk’s story as a parallel for so much of what was happening to the gay community across the United States at the time. As one of the first openly gay public officials, Milk was a target, and his life was tragically taken before we could see the full potential of his charismatic leadership. Written in 1982 by San Francisco reporter Randy Shilts, there are aspects of this account that are now dated, but it vividly captures the outlook and political complexity of San Francisco in the 1970s. While you’re looking for new reading material, check out these other LGBTQ books that are inspiring, compelling, and entertaining.

A finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and winner of the California Book Award, this can easily be considered one of the best biographies of all time. It’s the first ​​comprehensive biography of Cesar Chavez, one of the most influential Latinx figures in American history. Chavez’s remarkable life, mind, and journey from migrant worker to movement leader is written poignantly and with nuance by Miriam Pawel, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist.

Alice Walker has given us some of the most celebrated and beloved books, including The Color Purple , which made her the first Black woman to win a Pulitzer Prize. In this comprehensive biography, Evelyn C. White conducts extensive research and numerous interviews and draws connections between Walker’s early life events, societal ills, and the brilliant writer that Walker would become. Whether you’ve read Walker’s work already or not, this is a biography you won’t want to miss. Here are more of the best books by female authors .

In this dual biography, Stephen M. Ward (professor of Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan) skillfully crafts the rarely told story of James and Grace Lee Boggs. A true power couple, these intellectual and revolutionary minds were instrumental in the struggle for Black freedom. Hailing from different backgrounds, they moved along parallel paths until they converged in Detroit. Ward’s deep knowledge of the city shines through as well, making this a fascinating read for anyone interested in U.S. history, activism, labor movements, or love stories. Don’t miss these other books by Black authors across all genres.

The three Brontë sisters have been the subject of many biographies and much gossip. In this examination, author Lucasta Miller illustrates how the evolving views of the Brontës say more about the times in which these biographies were written than they do about the famous siblings themselves. Through research, Miller dispels myths and poses new theories, drawing readers in with her funny and frank style.

Yes, this is a book for sports fans, but it’s also for anyone who admires trailblazers and humanitarians. With narrative pacing that will sweep away any reader, Pulitzer Prize winner David Maraniss shows us why Pittsburgh Pirate Roberto Clemente meant so much to so many. Born in Puerto Rico, he broke barriers in baseball and felt a responsibility to help wherever he could. He died while trying to bring aid to Nicaragua, ending a bright light of a life far too soon. While this could work well for young baseball fans, depending on their age, you’ll also want to peruse this list of nonfiction books for kids .

Another biography for sports fans and world-history lovers, this in-depth account of Jesse Owens’ inspiring victories is an illuminating page-turner. Sports journalist and ESPN contributor Jeremy Schaap brings us to the 1936 Olympics in Berlin with vivid prose. We see what Owens was up against both at home and abroad, and how his wins reverberated across the world. Owens’ gold medals were both a personal triumph and a triumph against Nazi ideology. This is a fascinating read, particularly if you’re unfamiliar with Jesse Owens.

The public first became widely aware of Yuri Kochiyama when Malcolm X was assassinated. She was the woman who was by his side and cradled his head as he left this world. Activist, professor, and author Diane Carol Fujino weaves archival research and interviews to show who Kochiyama was before and after this moment, and how her early experiences led to a life dedicated to activism and solidarity-building between Black and Asian American communities . From the internment of Japanese Americans to the Black movement in Harlem and beyond, this first biography of Kochiyama uncovers important and rarely discussed moments in U.S. history.

Though everyone has heard of Gandhi and may even have some of his quotes framed, few know the story of his life. This biography takes us from his departure from South Africa to his assassination, the years of his remarkable life that changed the world the most dramatically. Author Ramachandra Guha is an acclaimed historian, and this serves not only as the story of a revolutionary but also as a lesson in India’s complex social structures.

If you’ve seen Hamilton , you probably remember the Marquis de Lafayette as the fun-loving young pal of Alexander Hamilton. In this original biography, best-selling author Sarah Vowell makes General Lafayette’s story just as entertaining as his portrayal in the musical. The Frenchman’s fast-paced, international life and his time in Washington’s army take center stage, which enables us to meet a cast of famous characters through his eyes, including Thomas Jefferson, Marie Antoinette, and Benjamin Franklin. If you don’t mind a little creative license, try these historical fiction books you won’t be able to put down.

Hands down one of the best biographies, The Black Count won the Pulitzer in 2013. Famed novelist Alexandre Dumas (known for The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers ) drew inspiration from the life of his father, Alex Dumas. What wasn’t included in his stories was that his father was the son of a slave—a Black man in a White world. Born in 1762 in Saint-Domingue, the young Alex moved to France, where he rose in the ranks to become a highly regarded general. His story is arguably more fascinating than his son’s fiction.

With the popularity of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings , audiences took notice of star Tony Leung. Those in the know recognize Leung from his early work, most notably films like Days of Being Wild , Chungking Express , In the Mood for Love , and 2046 , all directed by the iconic Wong Kar-Wai. In this first book-length biography of the legendary director, readers get a behind-the-scenes look at Hong Kong cinema, as well as insight into Kar-Wai’s influences and how he redefined the film industry.

If you can’t get enough of The Crown on Netflix, this biography will be your cup of tea. This is author Sally Bedell Smith’s third biography of a member of the royal family, and her expertise in making connections and presenting research shines. Smith takes us into the meeting rooms, social activities, and international tours that fill Queen Elizabeth II’s life . We see the effects of being constantly in the public eye and get to know a seemingly untouchable person on a human level, reminding us that she was once just a young girl who took on a monumental responsibility.

Some biographies interest us because we are fans of their famous subjects. Other biographies grip us because they show us untold stories we could only otherwise imagine. This biography of Doaa Al Zamel, a 19-year-old Syrian refugee, makes vivid a crisis that often feels too overwhelming to comprehend. Her story is one of too many like it, and her humanity makes it impossible to look away. If you haven’t read this book yet, start a book club and spread the word. This is a story that needs to be heard.

Another biography written about a little-known but immensely impactful person, this book is written with an insider’s view and nuanced objectivity. You may not have heard of Eunice Hunton Carter, but after reading this biography written by her grandson, you won’t be able to forget her. The granddaughter of slaves and one of the first women to graduate Smith College with both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in just four years, Carter was the only prosecutor sharp enough to bring down Lucky Luciano, a dangerous Mafia boss.

This is not your typical biography. It’s peppered with quotes, illustrations, anecdotes, and pop culture references. In fact, it might remind you of something you’d scroll through on the Internet. That’s because co-author Knizhnik created the wildly popular Notorious R.B.G. Tumblr. Co-author Carmon interviewed Justice Ginsburg for MSNBC (and sat down with her to fact-check this book), so you can be sure you’re getting well-researched facts as well as entertainment in this bestseller. A perfect read for anyone who misses RBG, may she rest in peace and power. You’ll also love these Ruth Bader Ginsburg quotes on women, equality, and justice. And soon, you’ll be able to catch RBG on a new 2023 stamp .

Writer Zora Neale Hurston’s colorful life and personality make for excellent reading. Hurston was a prolific author who created boundary-pushing work in just about every genre, and her biography also touches upon important figures and events. With friendships that included Langston Hughes , rivals that included Richard Wright, and a life span that included the Harlem Renaissance, the Great Depression, World War II, and the beginning of the civil rights movement, Hurston’s life was as full and complex as her novels.

This book remains the gold standard for modern biographies. Johnson, a poet, essayist, biographer, and lexicographer, is best known for publishing A Dictionary of the English Language in 1755—widely considered one of the best dictionaries ever published. Although not much is known about Johnson’s early life, this biography showcases the rise of Johnson’s tremendous career and details his ability to overcome adversity, including his struggles with anxiety, hearing loss, partial blindness, and behavioral tics, which were diagnosed posthumously as Tourette’s syndrome. If poems pique your interest, pick up a few of the best poetry books of all time, too.

This biography by historian Doris Kearns Goodwin profiles the life of America’s 16th president, as well as four members of his cabinet who served with him from 1861 to 1865. Critics consider this book, which won the 2006 Lincoln Prize, to be one of the most insightful and readable portraits of Lincoln because it focuses on personalities, not politics—namely, how Lincoln managed to build relationships with some of his former rivals.

Written by award-winning science writer Rebecca Skloot, this book tells the tragic story of Henrietta Lacks, a poor Black tobacco farmer and mother of five who died from an aggressive form of cervical cancer in 1951, at age 31. Before she died, researchers took her tumor cells without her knowledge or her family’s permission. Those cells—which now number in the billions and are known as HeLa cells—became one of the most crucial tools in the field of medicine. Skloot expertly weaves a discussion of race and ethics into this tale of scientific discovery.

It’s easy to see why critics love this Pulitzer Prize-winning portrait of our second president. Written by American historian and esteemed author David McCullough, John Adams is a soaring, powerful read. It takes the reader on an in-depth journey of Adams’ early life and through his presidency and marriage to Abigail. While it focuses on politics, it’s also a love story and a study of human nature and loyalty. It was so well received that it spawned the critically acclaimed HBO series of the same name. Here are more book-to-movie adaptations that are worth a watch.

Reading this article on a smartphone? You likely have Steve Jobs to thank for that. Written by notable biographer Walter Isaacson, this book provides readers with a never-before-seen, unrestricted, and unfiltered glimpse into the Apple founder’s life. Isaacson based the book on more than 40 interviews that he held with Jobs over a period of several years while Jobs was terminally ill, as well as hundreds of interviews he conducted with Jobs’ family members, friends, and colleagues. Jobs was and still is widely considered one of the world’s greatest innovators, and this book presents a concise yet intricate look at the man behind the myth.

Not so much a singular biography as a collection of biographies, this book profiles the hardships that three sharecropper families faced during the Great Depression. Along with photographer Walker Evans’ stark images, the book details the suffering endured by the three poverty-stricken families as they struggle to survive the Dust Bowl’s harsh conditions. Although it was a commercial flop at the time, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men is now widely considered to be a pillar of exemplary journalism.

Another collection of biographies, this book is the follow-up to Gender Outlaw , Kate Bornstein’s groundbreaking and genre-breaking memoir about her transformation from man to woman. In this sequel, Bornstein and co-author S. Bear Bergman turn our attention to the next generation of artists, creatives, and professionals across the trans spectrum. Through essays, conversations, and art, we get to see some of the beautiful diversity in the trans community. To learn more about gender identity, find out exactly what non-binary means —and why it’s important to understand.

In 1887, Pittsburgh-based reporter Nelly Bly feigned insanity at a boarding house so that she would be involuntarily committed to a 10-day stay at the Women’s Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island and could report on the horrific conditions present at the clinic. Bly’s exposé, aptly titled Ten Days in a Mad-House , was the obvious catalyst for this book by Deborah Noyes, which also delves into Bly’s entire reporting career, up to the time of her death. While the book is marketed as middle school nonfiction and it’s one of the best books for teens and tweens, its focus on sexism in the workplace, mental health, and gender norms make it a must-read for adults, too.

This biography details the life and career of one of the world’s greatest leaders: Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, who served as the British Prime Minister from 1940 to 1945 and then again between 1951 and 1955. This book highlights aspects of Churchill’s life that are seldom discussed: his childhood and upbringing as a wealthy aristocrat; his early career in the army and government; his advocacy of the Labor Party; and, of course, his leadership during World War II, where he led his country to victory against Nazi Germany.

Yes, Albert Einstein was a genius, and plenty has already been written about the physicist’s Nobel Prize-winning scientific discoveries. Where this book differs, however, is in its examination of the aspects of Einstein’s life that made him human and relatable. Because of Einstein’s “sassy attitude,” for example, he was unable to find a job after graduating from Swiss Federal Polytechnic in Zurich, where he studied physics. One of the best biographies on Einstein, the book discusses how Einstein’s insolent personality served as the impetus for his groundbreaking discoveries and also explores his often rocky relationships with his wives, other women, his children, and his colleagues.

The first of a three-volume set by noted history professor Blanche Wieson Cook, this biography looks at the woman who was often referred to as the greatest First Lady the United States has ever had. In this volume, Cook explores the early parts of Roosevelt’s life, including her birth into a wealthy family that was torn apart by alcoholism; an unhappy childhood that stemmed from the early death of her parents; her education at a private finishing school; and her marriage to FDR.

Are you a fan of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton ? If so, this biography by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ron Chernow is a must-read. The book—jokingly referred to as “Hamiltome” because of its hefty size—chronicles the life of this Founding Father. It starts with Hamilton’s humble beginnings as an orphan, then winds its way through his service as a staunch patriot in George Washington’s army. It also showcases Hamilton’s meteoric rise to become the first Treasury Secretary of the United States before ending with his death, which came at the hands of a duel with Aaron Burr. Next, switch gears and check out some of the best fiction books to read this year.

Originally Published: October 15, 2021

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The Best Memoirs of 2022

Personal history meets a careful analysis of the cultural forces that inform it in these standout books..

In 2022, we continued to expand our idea of what a memoir can be. Call it hybrid memoir, memoir-plus, researched memoir — the industry hasn’t quite decided — but the blending of personal history with careful analysis of the cultural forces and institutions that inform it has exploded the genre with possibility. What better way to learn about issues like the immigration crisis, the effects of gentrification, the long-lasting repercussions of colonialism, or the function of art in human connection than through the stories of those who live within them? Here are some of the year’s best.

10. Solito, Javier Zamora

On April 6, 1999, 9-year-old Javier Zamora traveled with his grandfather from his home in El Salvador to Guatemala, where his grandfather would say good-bye and send him off on a seven-week journey to his parents in San Francisco. Solito reads like a diary of the trek, recounting the strange, immediate intimacy born from sharing the experience with other immigrants, the physical and emotional toll of daily slogs through dangerous terrain and waters, the disorientation of never really knowing who to trust. Choosing to tell a childhood story from the perspective at the time can go horribly wrong, but Zamora nails the tone and mind-set of his youth. His vulnerability, yearning, insecurities, and hope are vivid. It’s a journey that would test anyone’s mettle, let alone that of a child on his own, but during those seven weeks Zamora sees some of the best humanity has to offer: solidarity, bravery, sacrifice. He’s created something quite rare here — an account of the high-stakes journey to a better life as experienced, moment to moment, by one of the most vulnerable travelers. It’s a story told by the person who owns it , from a point in time where he’s able to understand just how precarious the endeavor was and how afraid his family must have been.

9. The Man Who Could Move Clouds, Ingrid Rojas Contreras

Ingrid Rojas Contreras’s memoir is as much about her grandfather as it is about herself. After a bicycle crash throws her into weeks of amnesia, she relies on her family to piece her memory back together. Through this lens, Rojas Contreras brings us along as she is guided through the mesmerizing journey of her family history, which is defined both by the guerrilla warfare that eventually drove them out of Colombia when she was 14 and the lineage of supernatural gifts that she traces back to her grandfather, a curandero, or shaman. Rojas Contreras’s talent as a fiction writer comes through in her lyrical prose and her ability to craft clear scenery and narratives. She juggles colonial criticism, explorations of marginalized cultures, and intricate analyses of family dynamics and makes it look easy.

8. Admissions: A Memoir of Surviving Boarding School, Kendra James

Kendra James’s memoir recounting her experience as the first Black legacy student at a prestigious Connecticut boarding school is as juicy as it is enlightening. It’s also as infuriating as anyone who lives outside those rarefied circles might expect — years of dealing with wealthy white teens who would balk at the idea of their privilege, an administration that doles out discipline with bias, clueless (but well meaning … maybe?) teachers who diversify their syllabi but then alienate students of color in their execution, countless microaggressions and belittling assumptions. It isn’t until James leaves the school — and, years later, becomes an admissions officer doing outreach with Black and Latinx families, selling them the dream and potential of prep schools — that she really starts to process and grapple with the racism she experienced.

7. This Boy We Made: A Memoir of Motherhood, Genetics, and Facing the Unknown, Taylor Harris

Taylor Harris’s debut is as much about motherhood as it is about our broken health-care system. Harris identifies a clear divider in her life — there’s before she woke up one morning to find her son Tophs, two months shy of 2 years old, awake but unresponsive, and then there’s after. Harris connects the two eras in unexpected ways, jumping back and forth between the onset and development of her generalized anxiety disorder and her experience navigating Tophs’s mysterious illness. She carries the tools that were necessary for her survival from the before to the after — her faith in God, her trust in those who love her, her willingness to advocate for herself and her family, her ability to sit in discomfort while “feeling out the boundaries of fear” — and we’re with her as she endures a mother’s worst nightmare, grappling with the inevitable mom guilt that comes with it. It’s an illuminating and empowering story, beautifully rendered.

6. Feral City: On Finding Liberation in Lockdown New York, Jeremiah Moss

Jeremiah Moss arrived in the East Village in the early 1990s as a transgender man searching for his people. In the 20-odd years since, he’s watched as his home turned hostile, distorting to accommodate the super-wealthy “hypernormal” transplants — he calls them New People — and sterilizing everything that made the city open, liberating, and a haven for outsiders. When 2020 hits and the city goes into lockdown, something changes. The New People flee, the others stay, and the New Yorkers who truly consider the city home reclaim it. Moss describes a complicated ambivalence as he bikes from neighborhood to neighborhood, reveling in the sense of unity and resilience, while grieving for everything and everyone lost. Feral City is often exuberant, but the reading experience is bittersweet, knowing that the city is by and large rushing past the freedom of that “feral” moment and back to soaring rents and inhumane policing. But these forces are being challenged by many of the groups Moss describes so lovingly. His academic background comes through in his integration of psychoanalysis, sociopolitical theory, and queer theory. This is a must-read for New York transplants — newcomers to any city really — who want to support their new community rather than displace it.

5. Essential Labor: Mothering As Social Change, Angela Garbes

Angela Garbes’s 2019 debut, Like a Mother , was an intimate, feminist analysis of pregnancy. Essential Labor is the follow-up, building on the themes of the first book, so it’s no surprise it’s been a best seller. Part personal history, part sociopolitical analysis, part manifesto, the genre-bending memoir examines the role and work of motherhood as revealed by the COVID-19 pandemic. In all the discourse about essential workers, mothers have largely been ignored, and Garbes investigates the reasons — why do we resist the classification of motherhood, and caretaking in general, as labor? Garbes places the American treatment — and devaluing — of motherhood in context with the culture of motherhood around the world. Pulling from her Filipino family’s history, she highlights the profound responsibility and power of motherhood, especially as a tool toward creating a better, more empathetic and community-based future.

4. I’m Glad My Mom Died, Jennette McCurdy

No one anticipated the overwhelming response to child actor Jennette McCurdy’s provocative memoir — all major retailers sold out within a day of its release — and the hype proved to be warranted. You never know what you’re going to get with celebrity memoirs, but McCurdy’s is beautifully executed — poignant, illuminating, and well crafted at the line level. Her recollection of growing up with an abusive mother intent on making her a star (and succeeding) balances dark humor with heartbreak. You feel McCurdy yearning for a relationship with her mother that you know, as an outside observer, is just impossible, and the pain is palpable. My guess is I’m Glad My Mom Died will be a pivotal text in the increasingly relevant discussion of the ethics of child celebrity, from Hollywood to TikTok.

3. Lost & Found, Kathryn Schulz

Pulitzer Prize winner Kathryn Schulz’s New Yorker essay “ When Things Go Missing ” nestled into some far corner of my brain when I read it in 2017 and has come back to mind every now and then ever since. How exciting, then, to learn she had expanded her investigation into the many connected definitions and experiences of loss into this deeply affecting memoir. Schulz seamlessly weaves philosophy, psychology, and history with the death of her father, keeping the heart of the story close at all turns. Most impressive is her ability to describe her father’s decline as both traumatic and mundane, walking a tightrope between emotions that shift as arbitrarily as the directions in which one might stumble. That merging of seemingly conflicting experiences — lightness and heaviness, significant and trivial — is a consistent theme throughout the book, handled masterfully.

2. Stay True, Hua Hsu

Hua Hsu’s writing in his debut memoir flows gracefully, hypnotically, propulsively. His ode to his college friend Ken, and the specificity of college friendships in general, shifts into meditations on selfhood and identity, and how art and family history inform both. That this transformative friendship was cut short by Ken’s murder during a hijacking before they’d even graduated lends a poignancy to the lessons Ken helped him realize, the lessons that stayed with him as he figured out who he was. Decades later, Hsu shares those lessons with us. We see the way his comfort zone expands as his worldview does, too. In welcoming someone who seemed at first to embody everything he resented about American culture — Ken loved baseball, Hua wrote zines; Ken’s Japanese family had spent generations assimilating, Hua was the son of Taiwanese immigrants and he still felt like an outsider although he was born in the US — Hua slowly broadens his definition of meaning. It’s a story about art, America, and what it was like to be Asian American in the Bay Area in the ’90s, but more than that, it’s about human connection.

1. Easy Beauty , Chloé Cooper Jones

Pulitzer Prize finalist, doctor of philosophy, and general multi-hyphenate Chloé Cooper Jones’s debut shifted my understanding of a world I’ve only experienced while able-bodied. Easy Beauty follows the author — who was born with a rare congenital condition known as sacral agenesisa, a disability that visibly sets her apart from the general population and which has caused a lifetime of underlying pain— through a year of traveling in pursuit of meaning, both personal and existential. This narrative propels the book while providing detours for exploration of her coming-of-age, family history, motherhood, and theories about beauty, a concept that has defined the bulk of her life. It’s heady but accessible. The through line of this story is the titular theory and its opposite — i.e., easy versus difficult beauty; i.e., beauty that is obvious versus beauty that makes you work for it — and the genius of Easy Beauty is in its functioning as the latter. Cooper Jones puts us through the wringer a bit, trusting us to keep up with her analyses and forcing us to stay close to her physical and emotional pain, but the result is extraordinary.

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The 10 Best Nonfiction Books of 2022

These are independent reviews of the products mentioned, but TIME receives a commission when purchases are made through affiliate links at no additional cost to the purchaser.

A good nonfiction book doesn’t just tell you something new about the world, it pulls you out of your place in it and dares you to reconsider what you thought you knew, maybe even who you are. The best nonfiction books that arrived this year vary in scope—some are highly specific, some broad and searching—but they all ask giant questions about loss, strength, and survival. In The Escape Artist , Jonathan Freedland underlines the power of the truth through the journey of one of the first Jews to escape Auschwitz . In How Far the Light Reaches , Sabrina Imbler reveals the ways marine biology can teach us about the deepest, most human parts of ourselves. From Stacy Schiff’s brilliant chronicle of Samuel Adams’ role in the American Revolution to Imani Perry’s illuminating tour of the American South, here are the 10 best nonfiction books of 2022.

10. The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams, Stacy Schiff

Pulitzer Prize winner Stacy Schiff revisits the American Revolution in her engrossing biography of founding father Samuel Adams. The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams centers on the years leading up to 1776 when Adams helped fan the earliest flames of the independence movement. Though he drove the anti-British rebellion in Massachusetts and had an outsized role in the Revolution, Adams’ story has been told far less than those of other founders like George Washington and Alexander Hamilton . Schiff details his clandestine work and his growing radicalization to show how vital he was to American independence, crafting an intricate portrait of a man long overshadowed by his contemporaries.

Buy Now : The Revolutionary on Bookshop | Amazon

9. The Invisible Kingdom, Meghan O’Rourke

Beginning in the late 1990s, Meghan O’Rourke was tormented by mysterious symptoms that would consume her life for years to follow. She describes her wrenching experience searching for a diagnosis in The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness , a 2022 National Book Award finalist. O’Rourke’s reported memoir is an indictment of the U.S. health care system and its approach—or lack thereof—to identifying and treating chronic illnesses, which take a grave toll on millions of Americans. Moving between her own medical journey, the history of illness in the U.S., and the crisis faced by millions currently suffering from long COVID , O’Rourke writes with an empathetic hand to argue why and how we need to change our systems to better support patients. The book is a bold and brave exploration into a much-overlooked topic, one that she punctuates with candor and urgency.

Buy Now : The Invisible Kingdom on Bookshop | Amazon

8. How Far the Light Reaches, Sabrina Imbler

Sabrina Imbler thoughtfully examines connections between science and humanity, tying together what should be very loose threads in 10 dazzling essays, each a study of a different sea creature. In one piece from their debut collection, Imbler explores their mother’s tumultuous relationship with eating while simultaneously looking at how female octopi starve themselves to death to protect their young. In another, they relate the morphing nature of cuttlefish with their own experiences navigating their gender identity. Throughout, Imbler reveals the surprising ways that sea creatures can teach us about family, sexuality, and survival.

Buy Now : How Far the Light Reaches on Bookshop | Amazon

7. His Name Is George Floyd, Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa

In their engaging book, Washington Post journalists Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnpia expand on their reporting of the 2020 murder of George Floyd by police officer Derek Chauvin. His Name Is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice centers on the life Floyd led before he was killed, captured through hundreds of interviews and richly textured research. The biography explores how Floyd’s experiences were shaped by systemic racism, from the over-policed communities where he was raised to the segregated schools he attended. Samuels and Olorunnipa illustrate, in compassionate terms, the father and friend who wanted more for his life, and how his death became a global symbol for change .

Buy Now : His Name Is George Floyd on Bookshop | Amazon

6. Constructing a Nervous System, Margo Jefferson

In her second memoir, Pulitzer Prize winner Margo Jefferson brilliantly interrogates and expands the form. Constructing a Nervous System finds the author reflecting on her life, the lives of her family, and those of her literary and artistic heroes. Jefferson oscillates between criticism and personal narrative, engaging with ideas about performance, artistry, and the act of writing through a plethora of lively threads. She considers everything: her parents, Bing Crosby and Ike Turner, the way a ballerina moves on stage. What emerges is a carefully woven tapestry of American life, brought together by Jefferson’s lyrical and electric prose.

Buy Now : Constructing a Nervous System on Bookshop | Amazon

5. An Immense World, Ed Yong

Journalist Ed Yong reminds readers that the world is very large and full of incredible things. An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us is a celebration of sights and sounds, smells and tastes, and the unique ways different animals exist on the planet we all share. Yong’s absorbing book is a joyful blend of scientific study and elegant prose that transforms textbook fodder into something much more exciting and accessible. From dissecting why dogs love to sniff around so much to detailing how fish move in rivers, Yong underlines why it’s so important to take the time to stop and appreciate the perspectives of all the living things that surround us.

Buy Now : An Immense World on Bookshop | Amazon

4. The Escape Artist, Jonathan Freedland

When he was just 19 years old, Rudolf Vrba became one of the first Jews to break out of Auschwitz. It was April 1944, and Vrba had spent the last two years enduring horror after horror at the concentration camp, determined to make it out alive. As Jonathan Freedland captures in his harrowing biography, Vrba was fixated on remembering every atrocity because he knew that one day his story could save lives. The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World is heavy reading that spares no detail of the brutalities perpetrated by the Nazis during the Holocaust . It’s also a crucial, skillfully rendered look inside the journey of a teenager who risked his life to warn Jews, and the rest of the world, about what was happening in Auschwitz.

Buy Now : The Escape Artist on Bookshop | Amazon

3. Ducks, Kate Beaton

In 2005, Kate Beaton had just graduated from college and was yearning to start her career as an artist. But she had student loans to pay off and the oil boom meant that it was easy to get a job out in the sands, so she did. In her first full-length graphic memoir, Beaton reflects on her time working with a primarily male labor force in harsh conditions where trauma lingered and loneliness prevailed. Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands is a bruising and intimate account of survival and exploitation—of both the land and the people who worked on it—and is brought to life by Beaton’s immersive illustrations. In unveiling her plight, Beaton makes stunning observations about the intersections of class, gender, and capitalism.

Buy Now : Ducks on Bookshop | Amazon

2. South to America, Imani Perry

For her striking work of nonfiction, Imani Perry takes a tour of the American South , visiting more than 10 states, including her native Alabama. Perry argues that the associations and assumptions made about the South—with racism at their core—are essential to understanding the United States as a whole. While there is plenty of history embedded throughout South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation , the winner of the 2022 National Book Award for nonfiction, it is no history book. Instead, it’s an impressive mix of deftly compiled research and memoir, with Perry making poignant reflections on the lives of her own ancestors. The result is a revelatory account of the South’s ugly past—the Civil War, slavery, and Jim Crow Laws—and how that history still reverberates today.

Buy Now : South to America on Bookshop | Amazon

1. In Love, Amy Bloom

After Amy Bloom’s husband Brian was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, she supported him through the impossibly difficult decision to end his life, on his terms, with the aid of an organization based in Switzerland. Bloom’s memoir begins with their last flight together—on the way to Zurich—as she reflects on the reality that she will be flying home alone. But in these moments of despair, and the enormous grief that follows their trip, she finds tenderness and hope in remembering all that came before it. In writing about their marriage, Bloom unveils a powerful truth about the slippery nature of time. The book is a beautiful, heartfelt tribute to her husband, and a crucial reminder that what drives grief is often the most profound kind of love.

Buy Now : In Love on Bookshop | Amazon

More Must-Reads from TIME

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• ‘We’re Living in a Nightmare:’ Inside the Health Crisis of a Texas Bitcoin Town
• Remembering Shannen Doherty , the Quintessential Gen X Girl
• How Often Do You Really Need to Wash Your Sheets?
• Why Mail Theft Is on the Rise
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• Get Our Paris Olympics Newsletter in Your Inbox

Write to Annabel Gutterman at [email protected]

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BOOKS SPRING PREVIEW: NONFICTION

17 New Nonfiction Books to Read This Season

Two journalists dive into George Floyd’s life and family; Viola Davis reflects on her career; a historian explores the brutal underpinnings of the British Empire; and more.

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By John Williams ,  Tina Jordan and Joumana Khatib

Whether you want to read about current events, memoirs or history, this season brings plenty of new titles.

Memoirs & Biographies | Current Affairs | History, Revisited | Other

MEMOIRS & BIOGRAPHIES

‘ Comedy Comedy Comedy Drama: A Memoir, ’ by Bob Odenkirk

Odenkirk’s memoir might have also been titled “Obscurity Obscurity Obscurity Fame.” He was a cult favorite of comedy fans in the late 1990s for his work on the sketch-comedy series “Mr. Show,” but his supporting role in “Breaking Bad” and his starring turn in the show’s prequel, “Better Call Saul,” made him a household name. His memoir charts his dogged and unlikely path from Chicago comedy clubs to leading man.

Random House, out now

‘ Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand ,’ by John Markoff

Brand might be best known for his countercultural magazine Whole Earth Catalog, which first published in 1968. In that same decade, Brand was a participant in the exploits of Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters. Now 83, he went on to a long and varied life of thought and activism in the realms of environmentalism, Native American rights and personal computing. Markoff, a former technology reporter for The New York Times, wraps his arms around the whole story in this new biography.

Penguin Press, out now

‘ Ancestor Trouble: A Reckoning and a Reconciliation ,’ by Maud Newton

In her first book, Newton, a critic and essayist, digs deep into her family’s past, from Depression-era Texas to witch-hunting Massachusetts, not flinching at what she sees. Closer to the present day, she wrestles with her father’s racism and her family’s religious extremism. Rooted in the personal, Newton’s book opens out to an examination of a culture besotted with Ancestry.com and 23andme.com , and asks what we’re really looking for in the past.

Random House, March 29

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8 books that NPR critics and staff were eager to tell you about in 2022

Maison Tran

It's that time of year again: NPR brings you the complete Books We Love list for 2022, a quirky, highly personal collection of our staff and contributors' favorite books of the year.

We've curated a range of reads from the renaissance of ever-diverse graphic novels to hair-raising thrillers and mysteries .

Of the 402 books that made the list, here are eight of the books that our Books We Love readers recommended the most.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

You know that feeling when you finally beat a video game? Emotional catharsis floods your mind and body and, drained, you set down the controller with a sigh. If you're not much of a gamer, but you still crave that emotional release, Gabrielle Zevin's brilliant novel about two friends' journey to video game stardom is the perfect substitute. This story of love, loss and the constant battle between art and commercial success left me short of breath. It's one of those books you'll be thinking about long after "game over."

— Brandon Carter , associate producer, Washington Desk

Thistlefoot by GennaRose Nethercott

For centuries, the crone Baba Yaga has been a figure in Slavic folklore – the kind of character who might lend you a magical candle or kill you and use your skull to decorate her house on chicken legs. In her debut novel, Thistlefoot , author and folklorist GennaRose Nethercott reimagines Baba Yaga as a Jewish woman living in an Eastern European shtetl in 1919, during a time of civil war and pogroms. Through the crone and her story, Nethercott explores the idea of folklore as a retelling of a memory too painful to talk about plainly.

— Mallory Yu , producer/editor, All Things Considered

I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy

Former iCarly star Jennette McCurdy's account of her tumultuous relationship with show business, disordered eating and abuse by her mother is the heart of her debut memoir, I'm Glad My Mom Died . McCurdy's storytelling is not only fantastic but intimate and raw, full of both pain and humor. While it can be hard to read, learning about how much she was going through privately while in the public eye, I'm Glad My Mom Died is also hard to put down – and hard to forget.

— Aja Miller, associate, Member Partnership

If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery

I could say something buttoned-up, like "Jonathan Escoffery's debut collection of short stories examines race, identity and class in incisive ways." And that'd be true, but phrasing it that way betrays the lack of didacticism in his writing . Instead, the book – which follows generations of one Jamaican American family – focuses on the hunger (literal and figurative), heartbreak, horniness and (maybe?) hope that often come hand-in-hand with trying to make it in this country.

— Andrew Limbong , correspondent, Culture Desk and host, Book of the Day

The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley

Lucy Foley is back with her latest whodunit, this time set in an eerie Parisian apartment complex. Running from her own problems, Jess decides to visit Ben, her journalist brother. But when she gets to Paris, Ben is nowhere to be found. None of his neighbors know where he is, but they all seem to know him – maybe a little too well. As she investigates, Jess learns more about her brother, his work and those peculiar neighbors. With characters suspicious and unlikable in their own way and a fun twist, you're in for a dark and moody escape .

— Arielle Retting , growth editor, Digital News

The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas

I'm a sucker for Gothic novels, and I've been loving the trend of Gothics that take place somewhere unexpected (i.e., not Europe). The Hacienda is a story that takes us to, well, a hacienda – in a remote Mexican town in the 1820s, not long after the War of Independence. The protagonist, Beatriz, moves to her new husband's large estate, eager to escape the rejection, poverty and tragedy that she's suffered in Mexico City. What she finds instead is a ridiculously haunted house inhabited by some equally haunted-seeming people – including those meant to be closest to her.

— Leah Donnella , supervising editor, Code Switch

How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu

Sequoia Nagamatsu's debut is beautiful and unsparing in its depiction of a world reeling from a climate catastrophe-driven plague . From the earliest days of a pandemic, to the impacts that linger centuries into the future, the plague forces humans to reckon with immeasurable grief and loss. And the commercialization of death is inescapable: There's a euthanasia amusement park for terminally ill children, a hotel for the dead. But despite the doom and gloom, these stories are endlessly imaginative and rich with meaning. Though the universe these stories are unfolding within is undeniably bleak, Nagamatsu imbues his characters with a sense of cosmic hope and humanity.

— Summer Thomad , production assistant, Code Switch

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

The 1950s weren't just unkind to women with aspirations outside the home – they were punishing. Case in point: Elizabeth Zott, chemist. She doesn't have her Ph.D. because she was assaulted by a professor; she's belittled and harassed by the men she works with. She falls in love with a star scientist – and is dogged by rumors that she's using him to get ahead. His accidental death, her surprise pregnancy and new single-mother desperation lead her to success in an unlikely place: a TV cooking show. But Zott gives her audience radical lessons that go beyond the kitchen. This book is an often funny-yet-infuriating read.

— Melissa Gray , senior producer, Weekend Edition

To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories .

41 Celebrity Memoirs That Are Actually Worth Reading

Products are independently selected by our editors. We may earn an affiliate commission from links.

Anyone who has glanced at a bestseller list lately can tell you that we are in the midst of (yet another?) celebrity memoir boom. From Britney Spears to Prince Harry, it seems like just about everyone is spilling their secrets via book deal —meaning ’tis the season for pages upon pages of Hollywood gossip, rock-and-roll road drama, and the darker sides of show business.

At their best, celebrity memoirs provide unusually candid portraits of the “real person” behind the public persona—and they don’t skimp on the dirty details. At worst, they can be ghostwritten fluff.

 Ahead, Vogue rounds up the best of the genre for your reading pleasure.

The Woman in Me by Britney Spears

Britney Spears

“Emerging from the shadows of a past marked by paparazzi harassment and betrayal by the people she trusted, Britney Spears finally speaks her truth in this highly anticipated—and then much celebrated—memoir. With a blend of deep sincerity and good humor, Spears fearlessly asserts her autonomy, leaving no doubt about who is truly in control of her life.” —Gia Yetikyel

Spare by Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex

Spare by Prince Harry

“Even for those who don’t keep up with the Royal Family, the central themes of grief, love, and creating a home apart from everything you’ve known in Prince Harry ’s shockingly intimate Spare make it a story very much worth reading.” —G.Y.

Paris: The Memoir by Paris Hilton

“ Paris Hilton’s 336-page book takes an in-depth look at the many labels she’s adorned and shed over the decades. Unpacking her childhood, episodes of teenage rebellions, and experience with verbal and physical abuse, she creates a place for readers to understand the origins of her pink paradise—and the strength it took to withstand years of extraordinary public pressure.” —G.Y.

One Life by Megan Rapinoe

“Olympic medalist and two-time Women's World Cup champion Megan Rapinoe shows a whole new side of herself in this memoir, in which she recounts coming out as gay in 2011—well before ‘inclusivity in sports’ was widely discussed, let alone prioritized—as well as her experience of taking a knee alongside former NFL player Colin Kaepernick to protest racial injustice and police brutality. For those who prefer their celebrity memoirs with a side of romance, Rapinoe also dishes on her courtship with now-wife, WNBA champion Sue Bird.” —Emma Specter

Becoming by Michelle Obama

“For months after reading this, I had to stop myself from thinking of Michelle as my friend. After spending a week (or, let’s be honest, an entire weekend under a blanket) reading a celebrity’s memoir, you feel as though you’ve spent time with them. It makes them more accessible and reminds you that at the end of the day, everyone is still human. I’m coming to grips with the fact that Michelle Obama is not actually my friend Michelle, but Becoming is still one of the best books I’ve read.” —Grace Atwood, founder of TheStripe.com

I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy  

I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy

“This bestselling memoir is hardly lighthearted fare, revolving as it does around child star McCurdy’s years of physical and emotional abuse at the hands of her fame-obsessed mother, but the rush to purchase it was no empty fanfare; it really is that good.” —E.S.

Save Me the Plums by Ruth Reichl

“Whether you’re a fan of food, legacy media gossip, or writer Ruth Reichl herself, you'll find plenty to dine out on in this account of Reichl’s time serving as the editor-in-chief of the now-defunct Gourmet magazine. Reichl freely admits that the glamorous world of New York publishing was a new one to her at the start of her Gourmet tenure, but I think it’s safe to say we could use a little more of her independence, irreverence and commitment to genuine creativity in the industry. (Bonus: her descriptions of meals are effortlessly mouth-watering, so make sure to eat with a delicious snack at the ready.)” —E.S.

The Vanity Fair Diaries by Tina Brown

“Perhaps more of a memoir of brushes with celebrity than actual celebrity memoir, Tina Brown’s Vanity Fair Diaries is nonetheless a phenomenal read, for the journalism nerd or anyone else who is interested in the inner workings of glossy magazine-making in its heyday. The book recounts the British editor's years as the editor in chief of the storied magazine, the feathers she unapologetically ruffled in pursuit of a more lively publication (the rates she paid Martin Amis for a single story would make a 2020s editor swoon!), the glamor of the gig, the grind of being a working mother. Brown kept meticulous notes when she occupied this role, and it shows; this is a book in which the delicious dirt is in the details.” —Chloe Schama

My Name Is Barbra by Barbra Streisand

My Name Is Barbra

“Ruminative and dishy, funny and smart, Barbra Streisand’s nearly 1,000-page memoir deftly captures the voice that first bewitched American audiences in the early 1960s—plus her weird dynamic with Marlon Brando, the nightmare of making Yentl with Mandy Patinkin, her lifelong fondness for baked potatoes, and other delicious bits.” —Marley Marius

Love, Pamela: A Memoir of Prose, Poetry, and Truth by Pamela Anderson

“With Pamela Anderson’s memoir, readers meet the woman behind the va-va-voom persona—she is, in fact, just a shy girl from Vancouver Island—through childhood memories and reflections on pursuing her dreams. Blending prose and poetry, it’s a refreshing and empowering read.” —G.Y.

Bossypants by Tina Fey

“If you haven’t read Fey’s 2011 memoir yet, you’re sleeping at the wheel. It follows her journey to stardom and is filled with amazing behind-the-scenes stories from her time on Saturday Night Live . Candid, self-deprecating, funny (duh): the perfect before-bed read.” —Christian Allaire

Just the Funny Parts by Nell Scovell

“The second female Letterman writer and creator of Sabrina the Teenage Witch , Scovell brings all the humor of Bossypants but with the added bite of coming up in the mighty sexist man’s world of TV. Scovell names names and calls it like she sees it.” —Michelle Ruiz, Vogue.com contributing editor

Fresh Off the Boat by Eddie Huang

“This memoir by the celebrity chef behind New York’s Baohaus inspired the ABC show of the same name—but the book version is far less fuzzy. Huang gives an unapologetically real look at his upbringing in a hardworking and often strict Chinese-American family. And his sumptuous descriptions of food make you really, really hungry.” —M.R.

Finding Me by Viola Davis

“A Rhode Island childhood marked by trauma and abuse gives way to an adulthood in the spotlight as one of the most recognizable actresses in Hollywood, and Davis relays the topsy-turviness of her life’s circumstances with a compelling mix of emotional honesty and grace.” —E.S.

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling

“Mindy Kaling holds a rarefied position in Hollywood these days, but the writer, actress and director's bestselling 2011 memoir proves that her ascent to the top wasn’t always an easy one. In Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? , Kaling recounts her growth from the shy, bookish child of immigrants to off-Broadway sensation to the youngest writer on the staff of the hit NBC sitcom The Office ; what’s most notable about the memoir, though, is the way Kaling's singular voice shines through, lending even the wildest of L.A. tales a crucial degree of relatability.” —E.S.

Open Book by Jessica Simpson

“I went into Open Book expecting a light, fun read from one of my favorite reality stars (remember Newlyweds ?) of all time—instead, I was blown away by an honest, funny, and touching memoir, which is so rarely the case with celebrity ‘tell-alls.’ Simpson candidly discusses her recovery journey after years of struggling with drugs and alcohol abuse; she also examines the darker side of her early-fame days as a singer, when she was constantly—and at times, brutally—compared to her counterparts like Britney Spears or Christina Aguilera. It was my favorite book of 2020, and I recommend it to any pop culture fan, Simpson fans or not.” —C.A.

This Will Only Hurt a Little by Busy Philipps

“A pitch-perfect example of the genre, Philipps serves up a funny and unflinching look at being a woman in Hollywood. She dives into her days as a Barbie spokes-kid and, bravely, her abortion as a teen, before moving on to her best friendship with Michelle Williams, details of James Franco’s douchey-ness on Freaks and Geeks , and struggles in her marriage. The best celebrity memoirs are as unsparingly honest as Philipps’ is.” —M.R.

Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing: A Memoir by Matthew Perry

“In his book, the late actor delves into his early life and rise to fame amidst an intense struggle with drug and alcohol addiction. Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing is written in such a way that you can imagine Perry speaking it to you—his voice is comforting, heartbreaking, and oh-so-familiar to the many of us who grew up watching him in the 1990s and early 2000s.” —G.Y.

Life by Keith Richards

“You might not think of Keith Richards as an elegant truth-teller, but his Life is a bracing tonic—straightforward but exciting, glamorous but heartfelt. I’m not a regular rock memoir reader, but this is a book that transcends whatever you might think the genre entails. Just go along with the music and don’t think too hard about it.” —Chloe Schama

You’ll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again by Julia Phillips

“Not sure she’s a straight-up A-list celeb, but Phillips made the A-list celebs. The Hollywood producer’s story is so full of wild pleasures and OMG moments that it’s easy to overlook the sheer brilliance that’s on offer.” —Lauren Mechling, Vogue contributor and author of How Could She

Horror Stories by Liz Phair

“The first of a planned two-part set (the second of which will be titled Fairy Tales ), Horror Stories is less of a traditional memoir and more of a series of vignettes that tackle some of the ‘small indignities that we all suffer daily, the silent insults to our system, the callous gestures that we make toward one another.’ Most of us won’t suffer the indignities of an anesthesiologist asking for our autograph during labor (we’re not all Gen X rock stars, after all), but we can wince at the, yes, horror, and relate to the rest of Phair’s not-so-tall tales .” —Danny Feekes, former managing editor at Goodreads

The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music by Dave Grohl

“Not to stereotype straight white men over 30, but all the ones I know happen to love Dave Grohl, making this memoir—which focuses on the Nirvana and Foo Fighter musician’s years on the road—an absolutely smashing birthday or holiday gift when another coffee mug just won’t do.” —E.S.

Open by Andre Agassi

Open: An Autobiography by Andre Agassi

“We’ve all read (or carefully avoided) the triumphal sports-star memoir: The thousands of solitary hours spent in pursuit of excellence while stoically avoiding everything else, leading up to that magical breakthrough when everything was deemed to be Worth It. This isn’t that memoir: Agassi, arguably the best player of his generation and certainly the flashiest and most-visible, is remarkably frank here about how much he seemed to loathe the entire experience, which was foisted on him by a kind of ur-Tennis Dad. Thankfully, we also get the other side of that: A late- career resurgence, followed by a blissful second marriage and a philanthropic turn that’s both heartfelt and, for the underprivileged children it focuses on, life-changing. For the king of neon and acid-washed jeans who became even more famous for saying ‘image is everything,’ this book is a tragic opera with a happy ending.” —Corey Seymour

Dear Mr. You by Mary Louise Parker

"Parker’s 2015 memoir has really stayed with me. Written as a series of letters to men she’s encountered, imagined, or loved, it’s a formal experiment, a wonderful portrait of an established artist claiming new territory. She’s not really in the tell-all business, but what she’s written reveals plenty.” —Julia Felsenthal, Vogue contributor

Born a Crime by Trevor Noah

“When Noah was born under apartheid in South Africa, his parents’ interracial union was, literally, a crime, punishable by five years in prison. That’s just the beginning of The Daily Show host’s remarkable story. At turns harrowing and hilarious, it’s perhaps best consumed via audiobook , read by the author.” —M.R.

Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey

“Based on decades’ worth of his own diary entries (which also included poems, photographs, prescriptions, and many, many bumper stickers), Matthew McConaughey’s memoir discusses his personal philosophy for handling life’s challenges, and what it means to keep catching the green lights through hardships.” —G.Y.

Dreams From My Father by Barack Obama

“The world rightfully knows Obama as a brilliant orator. But even before he was president (or even state senator), he wrote the hell out of this 1995 memoir (later re-released to great fanfare) about his upbringing in Hawaii and Kansas; his solitary, scholarly Columbia years; and his distant relationship with his dad. Now I spend my days waiting for his presidential memoir-in-the-works.” —M.R.

Sometimes I Feel Like a Nut by Jill Kargman

“As a fellow native New Yorker and NYC mom, Kargman’s dishing on ‘the city’ has always been hilarious and spot-on, even before her show Odd Mom Out came out. The essays in this book are so Jill : Honest, irreverent, slightly dark. full of curse words—yet imminently likable and, in fact, addictive.” —Zibby Owens, host of the Moms Don’t Have Time to Read Books podcast

The Office BFFs: Tales of The Office from Two Best Friends Who Were There by Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey

The Office BFFs: Tales of ‘The Office’ from Two Best Friends Who Were There by Jenna Fischer and and Angela Kinsey

“ The Office stars Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey may have been rivals on the show, but in real life, their sweet and silly bestie-dom is contagious, making this recollection of working on one of history’s most popular sitcoms a genuine pleasure to read.” —E.S.

The Dirt by Motley Crue

The Dirt: Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band by Tommy Lee

“I never thought that one of my favorite books of all time would have a cover featuring a lady in a G-string whose disembodied form we see dancing inside a whiskey bottle. But at least you’ve been warned: What you see is what you get in this group memoir from the glam metal band. The sheer magnitude of debauchery at their peak in the 1980s is too compelling to look away.” —Maris Kreizman, host of The Maris Review podcast

In Pieces by Sally Field

“Sally Field took her sweet time with In Pieces , her first memoir, written over seven years without the assistance of a ghostwriter. To call Field’s writing vulnerable doesn’t give enough credit to the way she recounts with crippling honesty the highs and lows of her personal and professional lives. She’s always been beloved as a performer, but In Pieces shows there’s so much more to admire about Field than the trophies on her mantle.” —Keaton Bell

I.M. by Isaac Mizrahi

“Mizrahi is well-known as a man of many talents, so adding ‘writer’ to the list isn’t a stretch. Still, the quality of his memoir, I.M. , is notable. He talks schmattas and sex with typical sass, but what makes this book memorable is that Mizrahi’s coming-of-age and coming-to-terms tale is bigger than fashion. —Laird Borelli-Persson, Vogue archive editor

Making a Scene by Constance Wu

“Often told that ‘good girls don’t make scenes,’ the TV and film star writes about finding an outlet for her feelings through community theater and how it eventually led to her pursuing an acting career. Authentic and very moving.” —G.Y.

Touched by the Sun: My Friendship With Jackie by Carly Simon

“Simon’s first book, Boys in the Trees , is what all celebrity memoirs should aspire to be, toggling between childhood struggles, musical stardom, and a highly publicized marriage to James Taylor with plenty of wit and revelations sprinkled throughout. Touched by the Sun is more scaled back, focusing on the iconic singer-songwriter’s unlikely but enduring friendship with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Detailing the lunches, movie dates, and nights out on the town that the two women shared before Onassis’s death in 1994, Simon highlights the woman beneath the public persona.” —K.B.

Wildflower by Drew Barrymore

“If you’re a completist, start with Drew’s first memoir, the propulsive Little Girl Lost (out of print but easy to find secondhand), which she wrote when she was 14. It recounts a young Barrymore’s stratospheric rise and quick drug-fueled descent, while Wildflower finds an older, more assured Barrymore looking back at a larger-than-life existence, one in which she emancipated from her parents, forged out on her own, and paved her distinctive path. As Drew writes, “I wanted to rescue myself. And I did.” —D.F.

Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business by Dolly Parton

“Before picking up Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics , take a peek at Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business from the 1990s. Get to know the rhinestone-studded, smooth-talking country singer as she discusses her personal philosophies, marriage, and her transformation from a music-loving teenager into one of the world’s most iconic women.” —G.Y.

Just Kids by Patti Smith

“Smith’s National Book Award–winning memoir is a portrait of a place and time—New York, Summer of Love—and a love letter to a bygone era that produced two iconoclasts: poet and musician Smith, and late photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. The story follows the duo’s trials and tribulations as they traverse Brooklyn, Coney Island, and Times Square, before settling at the infamous Chelsea Hotel. Smith has said that she didn’t write the book to be cathartic, but to fulfill a vow she made to Mapplethorpe on his deathbed. Ultimately, it’s the reader who reaps the rewards of that request.” —D.F.

Stories I Only Tell My Friends by Rob Lowe

“It’s over 10 years later, and I’m still crushed by Sam Seaborne’s departure from The West Wing , so I couldn’t resist Lowe’s memoir. It’s packed with plenty of sordid stories from his wild days as part of the Brat Pack, but also has so many great behind-the-scenes memories from some of my favorite TV shows and movies. While it probably won’t win a Pulitzer, any fan of ’80s rom-coms will still find this delightful!” —Becca Freeman, co-host of the Bad on Paper podcast

Me by Elton John

“Honest, charming, and all too real, Me follows the extraordinary life of Elton John from his origins in a London suburb to his rise to fame, legendary friendships, struggles with drug addiction, and philanthropy work.” —G.Y.

My Life So Far by Jane Fonda

“I’ve been reading this in fits and starts for about a decade, and I’ve still yet to encounter another life story so dutifully (and beautifully) re-examined. It’s easy to take Fonda’s cool self-assuredness—even in handcuffs!—for granted these days, but before Firebrand Jane there was “plain Jane,” woefully uncomfortable in her skin and desperate for outside validation. To chart her path from then until now (and to think of all that’s still to come) is something I wouldn’t mind doing for another 10 years.” —M.M.

The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher

“All three of Fisher’s memoirs reflect her trademark cool demeanor and self-deprecating nature, but her final release is my favorite. The beating heart of the book is the story of teenage Fisher’s secret three-month-long affair with Harrison Ford, then 33 and married with two kids. Fisher was hopelessly, naively in love with him, and Ford took advantage of the situation. You won’t find much behind-the-scenes Star Wars intel, but you will find an honest, painful account of Fisher’s experience as a young woman in love and at the mercy of so many patriarchal forces.” —Cristina Arreola, senior publicity and marketing manager, Sourcebooks

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Most memorable national anthems as country star Cody Johnson readies for MLB All-Star gig

Monday night's Major League Baseball Home Run Derby was the latest reminder of the fraught endeavor that is the performance of "The Star-Spangled Banner" … and let's just say country music star Ingrid Andress' rendition had – and still has – people talking.

Belting out the national anthem in front of tens of thousands of folks live – and with untold millions more watching on television or the mobile device du jour – is no easy feat, and many have risen to the occasion while embracing the task.

After her performance went viral Monday, Andress addressed it Tuesday on her X account , saying, "I was drunk last night" while announcing plans to check herself into rehab and apologizing to fans and MLB.

As we wish the best of luck to multi-platinum country singer Cody Johnson, who will tackle the anthem at Tuesday night's All-Star Game at Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas, here's a look back at some of the best versions of "The Star-Spangled Banner." And some of the worst.

Best national anthem performances at American sporting events

Whitney Houston: Arguably the most famous edition, the late pop star effectively rallied the country while singing it before Super Bowl 25 on Jan. 27, 1991 – just weeks before the first Gulf War ramped up into Operation Desert Storm, when American-led coalition forces liberated Kuwait following Iraq's 1990 invasion. Houston's stirring presentation occurred in Tampa Stadium, where airtight event security – hardly the norm it is nowadays – was in place as the NFL went ahead with what became a classic Super Sunday between the New York Giants and Buffalo Bills despite concerns about terrorism.

The Giants won thanks to Bills kicker Scott Norwood's missed field goal in the final seconds, no one was hurt, and Houston's version of "The Star Spangled Banner" hit the Billboard charts as a single. It went platinum after being re-released in 2001 following the Sept. 11 attacks.

José Feliciano: The Latin singer broke new ground at the 1968 World Series with his jazzy version, which was highly controversial at the time as it occurred at the apex of the Vietnam War. Feliciano also made the Billboard charts, the first time the national anthem appeared there. Despite the polarized reaction, this opened the floodgates for other artists to put their own spin on the song.

Marvin Gaye: Ironically, the late R&B star sang "The Star-Spangled Banner" at Game 4 of the 1968 World Series in Detroit – before Feliciano went viral (analog?) prior to Game 5. But Gaye is remembered for his soulful showing at the 1983 NBA All-Star Game at the Forum just outside Los Angeles. Many will champion Gaye's performance as the anthem's sports pinnacle.

Chris Stapleton: The country superstar's raspy voice translated into another epic anthem prior to Super Bowl 57 last year in Arizona. It left Philadelphia Eagles coach Nick Sirianni in tears hours before his team lost a heartbreaker of a game to the Kansas City Chiefs.

. @ChrisStapleton brings the house down with his performance of the National Anthem! #SBLVII pic.twitter.com/iiRzjVcByW — NFL (@NFL) February 12, 2023

Worst national anthem performances at American sporting events

Ingrid Andress: Given her multiple Grammy nominations, few were questioning her talent amid Monday night's reaction while still taken aback by the debacle. Andress' admission Tuesday shed needed light on the situation and hopefully scores her positive points for accountability as she shifts toward her recovery.

The national anthem ahead of the 2024 Home Run Derby on ESPN by four-time Grammy-nominated artist Ingrid Andress was interesting, to say the least... pic.twitter.com/p3HkV9Vcvg — Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) July 16, 2024

Fergie: Thirty-five years after Gaye's memorable anthem at the NBA All-Star Game, the former Black Eyed Peas singer went in the wrong direction at the same event. She later apologized while admitting, "I'm a risk taker artistically, but clearly this rendition didn't strike the intended tone." Unscientific surveillance of social media platforms Monday night revealed mass quantities of users letting Fergie off the hook for the worst version following Andress' regrettable one.

Roseanne Barr: The controversial comic laughed, screeched, spit and grabbed her crotch during the course of "singing" the anthem at a 1990 San Diego Padres game. A chorus of boos – in a military town – cascaded down on Barr for the duration, and President George H. W. Bush later deemed it "disgraceful."

Carl Lewis: Athletes can actually be up to the task – just reference former NFL star DeMarcus Ware prior to last year's Hall of Fame Game . Lewis? Nope. The anthem is understandably sacred to millions of Americans across the world. But if you allow your sense of humor to creep in a bit, Lewis' attempt at a 1993 New Jersey Nets game will invariably make you laugh … as it did former SportsCenter anchor Charlie Steiner and the famous "Francis Scott Off-Key" quip he directed at the nine-time gold medal-winning American track and field star while completely losing his composure on ESPN's air.

30 years ago today: 9-time Olympic gold medalist Carl Lewis sings the national anthem before a Bulls-Nets game in New Jersey. The next day, ESPN’s Charley Steiner reacts to the performance on SportsCenter: pic.twitter.com/eOULD1As9p — NBA Cobwebs (@NBACobwebs) January 21, 2023

Follow USA TODAY Sports' Nate Davis on X, formerly Twitter, @ByNateDavis .

Best biographies and memoirs of 2022 so far

What a thrill to talk about the Best Biographies and Memoirs of the Year So Far ! There are so many utterly absorbing, remarkable, and inspiring stories that we read this year (so far). Our number one pick is Stephanie Foo’s What My Bones Know — a poignant, moving, and absolutely gripping memoir of a woman reckoning with the trauma of her past, healing, and thriving.

We should also say: celebrity memoirs are really having a moment, we have three on overall list: Viola Davis, Molly Shannon, and Minnie Driver—which is rare, to say the least! The rest of the list includes page-turning stories of detectives and explorers, CIA warriors, life-affirming stories of finding love late in life, dealing with grief, and so much more. In other words, there’s something for everyone.

We’ve rounded up a few of our favorites here—but be sure to check out our full top twenty picks for the Best Biographies and Memoirs of the Year So Far here . And, of course, our 20 best books overall—led by our top choice, Remarkably Bright Creatures —are revealed here .

More articles like this

What to read next: a beach read from kevin kwan, a hilarious tome on travel, elin hilderbrand’s upcoming page-to-screen, and more.

Best literature and fiction of July 2024, as chosen by the Amazon Editors

Best history books of July 2024, as chosen by the Amazon Editors

About the Editor

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What to read next: A juicy memoir, the latest from Tomi Adeyemi, a perfect summer romance, and more

Best biographies and memoirs of the year so far, as chosen by the Amazon Editors

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Execs, coaches, scouts rank NFL's top 10 tight ends for 2024

• ESPN staff writer
• Previously a college football reporter for CBSSports.com
• University of Florida graduate

With 2024 NFL training camps on the horizon, it is again time for the league's true insiders to make their voices heard. ESPN surveyed league executives, coaches and scouts to help us rank the top 10 players at 11 different positions, from quarterback to cornerback and all positions in between. This is the fifth edition of these rankings, and as usual, several players have moved up or fallen off last year's lists .

A reminder of the rankings process: Voters give us their best 10 players at a position, then we compile the results and rank candidates based on number of top-10 votes, composite average and dozens of interviews, with research and film study help from ESPN NFL analyst Matt Bowen. In total, nearly 80 voters submitted a ballot on at least one position, and in many cases all positions. Additional voting and follow-up calls with those surveyed help us break any ties.

Each section includes quotes and nuggets from the voters on every ranked player -- even the honorable mentions. The objective is to identify the best players right now for 2024. This is not a five-year projection or a career achievement award. Who are the best players today?

We will roll out a position per day over 11 days. The schedule: running backs (7/8), defensive tackles (7/9), edge rushers (7/10), safeties (7/11), tight ends (7/12), interior offensive linemen (7/13), offensive tackles (7/14), quarterbacks (7/15), off-ball linebackers (7/16), wide receivers (7/17), cornerbacks (7/18).

This year's tight end group is compelling because it has the classic heavyweight fight of Travis Kelce vs. George Kittle , along with the undercard of rookies vs. the field.

The 2023 draft class of tight ends was considered to be one of the best in decades, and that's reflected in this ranking. Last season's rookies made an impression across the league.

This year's ranking had a shake-up at the top. Darren Waller, who ranked No. 5 in last year's edition, announced his retirement in June, and another 2023 top-five tight end dropped in the ranking. But that didn't water down an already stout field, led by the guy on the Chiefs.

We also have to give a shout-out to Iowa for developing tight end excellence. Three former Hawkeyes ranked in the top five of this year's tight ends list, which is a first for any collegiate program in the five-year history of this exercise.

Let's look at some of the game's top tight ends as ranked by execs, coaches and scouts around the NFL.

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PEOPLE's Best Books of July 2024: A Revealing JFK Jr. Biography and New Fiction from Taffy Brodesser-Akner

Look no further for the best books to slip into your beach bag this summer

Carly Tagen-Dye is the Books editorial assistant at PEOPLE, where she writes for both print and digital platforms.

The dog days of summer are upon us, along with some hot new books to pack with you on your next beach trip. From a McCarthy-era caper to rich kids behaving badly — as well as new celebrity memoirs and biographies — here are PEOPLE's picks for the best new books to read this July.

'JFK Jr: An Intimate Oral Biography' by RoseMarie Terenzio and Liz McNeil

Simon & Schuster

25 years after his tragic death, John F. Kennedy Jr. is back in the spotlight in this intimate, first-of-its-kind biography. Including insight from his closest friends and confidantes, this comprehensive look at his life — written by his former assistant and close friend RoseMarie Terenzio and PEOPLE editor-at-large Liz McNeil — shows a new side of the beloved figure.

'Loud' by Drew Afualo

Courtesy of AUWA Books

In 2020, Drew Afualo, fed up with the sexist, racist and bigoted content she saw online, took to social media to voice her concerns. Now, the rising internet star, known as the "Crusader for Women," is sharing her message of inclusivity in her debut memoir. An empowering read.

'The Briar Club' by Kate Quinn

The diverse residents of an all-women boarding house in McCarthy-era Washington, D.C., are brought together by a mysterious newcomer, but she harbors a dangerous secret that a murder threatens to reveal. Quinn evocatively balances the outward cheerfulness of the 1950s with historical observations exploring racism, misogyny, homophobia and political persecution in this sharply drawn, gripping novel. — Robin Micheli 

'Long Island Compromise' by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

Carl and Ruth Fletcher’s grown children have everything money can buy, but each one is a hot mess — and now the family’s fortune is in peril. Could it be a blessing in disguise? A farcical, entertaining drama about generational trauma. — Kim Hubbard

'More, Please' by Emma Specter

“For as long as I can remember, my mother has been beautiful.” It’s an arresting opening sentence, and the pages that follow — exploring societal expectations about the female body and the author’s own struggles with diet culture and binge eating — don’t disappoint. Unflinching and insightful. — Kim Hubbard

'Ladykiller' by Katherine Wood

A shared tragedy when they were teenagers forever bonds heiress Gia and bookish Abby even through their lives diverge as they get older. Decades later, the glamorous Gia invites Abby on a trip to reconnect, then disappears, leaving only an unfinished manuscript detailing the days leading up to her disappearance. A glitzy mystery with shades of Gone Girl .

'The Coin' by Yasmin Zaher

When a wealthy, eccentric Palestinian woman moves to N.Y.C., starts teaching at a middle school and gets caught up in a bag-selling scheme, she starts to slowly unravel. Watching her get embroiled in fraud and all that follows is a page-turning delight.

'All This and More' by Peng Shepherd

Remember “choose your own adventure” books? This fun, participatory novel is about a TV show that enables people to change their destiny, raising questions about technology and fate.

'The God of the Woods' by Liz Moore

In 1961 the disappearance of Bear Van Laar, 8, left his wealthy family shattered. Now, 14 years later, Bear’s teenage sister has gone missing from a summer camp near the family’s Adirondack estate. Intercutting past and present, Moore keeps the suspense at a fever pitch amid nuanced portraits of the out-of-touch Van Laars, their hangers-on and the locals who both depend on and resent them. A winner. — Kim Hubbard

'Masquerade' by O.O. Sangoyomi

This brilliant debut transports you to a reimagined West Africa in the 15th century. The vibrant prose tells the story of Òdòdó, a blacksmith kidnapped by a king to become his wife. As she navigates the politics of her new life, her journey is gripping — an immersive, one-of-a-kind story. — McKenzie Jean-Philippe

'Teddy' by Emily Dunlay

Teddy has always struggled under the thumbs of her powerful Dallas family and now, her controlling husband, an American embassy employee in Rome. Then a paparazzo photo threatens to destroy her. The glamour of La Dolce Vita and the repressive sexism of the 1960s pulse through this captivating exploration of the female psyche. — Robin Micheli 

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Who is JD Vance, Trump's pick for VP?

By Kathryn Watson , Laura Doan

Updated on: July 17, 2024 / 11:15 AM EDT / CBS News

Sen. JD Vance , the junior senator from Ohio, has come a long way in a short amount of time since he published his memoir, "Hillbilly Elegy," months before Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016. 

On Monday, Trump announced on his social media platform, Truth Social, that Vance is his running mate. 

Vance, 39, won election to the U.S. Senate  in 2022, and has only been a senator for a year and a half. Here's what to know about him. 

Vance's book, "Hillbilly Elegy," catapulted him to fame 

Vance's memoir, "Hillbilly Elegy," became immensely popular in 2016, telling Vance's personal story against the backdrop of the struggles of Appalachia and Rust Belt America.

A key message in Vance's book was that only by their own willpower can Americans in economically and socially struggling regions improve their own lives. But the book also gave Americans in coastal and more affluent areas a window into the lives of the people who made up the backbone of Trump's support in 2016. When Trump won, Vance's book became a bible of sorts for leaders and the media to better understand people who voted for Trump, and how a real estate mogul from New York could appeal to struggling Rust Belt Americans. 

 It rose  back to the top of bestseller lists after Trump announced his choice for VP.

"J.D.'s book, 'Hillbilly Elegy,' became a Major Best Seller and Movie, as it championed the hardworking men and women of our Country," Trump wrote on Truth Social as he announced Vance as his running mate. "J.D. has had a very successful business career in Technology and Finance, and now, during the Campaign, will be strongly focused on the people he fought so brilliantly for, the American Workers and Farmers in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Minnesota, and far beyond."

Vance said he would not have certified 2020 election if he were vice president

Vance has said he would have refused to certify the election on Jan. 6, 2020, if he were in Pence's position.

"If I had been vice president, I would have told the states, like Pennsylvania, Georgia and so many others that we needed to have multiple slates of electors," he told  ABC  News in February, "and I think the U.S. Congress should have fought over it from there. That is the legitimate way to deal with an election that a lot of folks, including me, think had a lot of problems in 2020. I think that's what we should have done."

In 2020, Trump pressured Pence, who presided over the joint session of Congress that affirmed the results of the presidential election, to refuse to certify the electoral votes that showed Joe Biden had won. Pence did not agree to do so, concluding that his role was ceremonial, and he ultimately announced that Mr. Biden had won — after an attack on the Capitol that day. Since then, Trump has continued to publicly  claim  that Pence "did have the right to change the outcome." 

On the issues

Although Vance said in 2022 that he'd back a national ban on abortions after 15 weeks, he indicated that he also supports Trump on leaving the question to the states. 

"I am pro-life. I want to save as many babies as possible," he told CBS News' " Face the Nation " in May. "And sure, I think it's totally reasonable to say that late-term abortions should not happen with reasonable exceptions. But I think Trump's approach here is trying to settle a very tough issue and actually empower the American people to decide it for themselves."

Vance opposes U.S. aid for Ukraine, arguing in a New York Times op-ed in April that the administration lacks a plan for Ukraine's success. He wrote that Ukraine lacks the manpower and the firepower to fend off Russia and also that the U.S. does not have the manufacturing capacity to make up the difference. He believes that Ukraine and its western allies must give up the goal of a return to Ukraine's boundaries in 1991, after the fall of the Soviet Union, to move forward. The U.S. and European allies support Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity and believe that Russian President Vladimir Putin will not stop his expansionism at Ukraine.

U.S. "could learn" from authoritarian Hungarian leader Victor Orbán

Vance  said on "Face the Nation " in May that the U.S "could learn from" some decisions made by authoritarian Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, including controversial policies related to dealing with dissidents at universities.

"On the university principle, the idea that taxpayers should have some influence in how their money is spent at these universities, it's a totally reasonable thing, and I do think that he's made some smart decisions there that we could learn from in the United States," Vance said. 

Vance noted at the time that he was not endorsing every thing Orbán has done. Orbán, who is revered in some hardline conservative circles, seized control of state universities, a move that critics say has extended his government's right-wing influence. Vance has praised the approach, saying his way could be the model for eliminating what he views as a left-wing bias at American universities. The May comments came as many universities in the U.S. were embroiled in protests from pro-Palestinian students. 

Trump met with Orbán last week, when the Hungarian prime minister was in the U.S. for the NATO summit. Orbán has endorsed Trump in  this year's presidential election  and said he hopes Trump can bring an end to  Russia's war in Ukraine .

Train and rail safety

Vance has been a leading voice on train safety after the toxic train disaster that spawned health and environmental concerns for the residents of East Palestine, Ohio. He is part of a bipartisan group of six senators who introduced rail safety legislation in March 2023 that aims to prevent future derailments. The measure has not passed in the Senate even though it has six GOP co-sponsors and the support of six Democratic lawmakers.

Vance had a challenging childhood 

Born James Donald Bowman in August 1984 in Middletown, Ohio, Vance was 6 years old when his biological father gave him up for adoption to his stepfather. His name changed from James Donald Bowman to James David Vance.

Vance's childhood was tumultuous. Not only did his father leave the family, but his mother struggled with an addiction to drugs and alcohol, which Vance documented in his book. Vance spent much of his time growing up with his grandparents in Kentucky. His grandmother, a "blue dog" Democrat who owned 19 handguns, according to Vance's Senate biography, was a big influence on his life. 

After graduating from high school, Vance enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps.

He holds a law degree from Yale 

As Vance discussed at length in his book, adapting to the social expectations and nuances of the elite culture at Yale University was initially a challenge for him. Vance graduated with a law degree from Yale in 2013. 

In the Senate

Vance serves on the Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee; the Commerce Science and Transportation Committee, Joint Economic Committee and the Special Committee on Aging.

Vance's wife, Usha, is an accomplished lawyer

Vance met his wife, Usha Chilukuri, at Yale. They married in 2014. She is a litigator and clerked for Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, as well as Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh when Kavanaugh was a federal judge. Vance and Chilukuri, who is Indian-American, have three young children. 

Hunter Woodall, Caitlin Huey-Burns and Melissa Quinn contributed to this report.

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Kathryn Watson is a politics reporter for CBS News Digital, based in Washington, D.C.

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