My Account Wish List Shopping Cart Log In
Store Location

Autobiographies & Memoirs

What you won't find here: tell-all celebrity confessions ghostwritten by a former member of the staff or entourage.

We like to keep our memoirs classy, and by that we mean literary. We're not saying you should never read just-the-facts-ma'am bios (we suggest you steer clear of the celebrity trash mentioned above), but there's something to be said for reading autobiographical works as good or better than any critically acclaimed novel.

Famous people have been penning reflections on their own lives almost as long as writing and people have existed simultaneously. Even portions of the Old Testament are written in first person, and though subsequent autobiographers have preferred to chronicle themselves in the third person, the fact remains that we generally want to hear how things transpired from the mouths of the principle players themselves.

It's an established fact that a lot of untruth and outright lying goes into memoirs. Authors either want to appear better than they were, want their opponents to appear worse than they were, or simply like to invent stories about themselves (they're writers, after all). But how much can we actually know about someone else's life? and if they're proven untrustworthy as their own narrators, doesn't that say something significant about them, too?

Not all of these are happy books. In fact, most of them aren't "happy" in the sense of things always going well for the protagonists, or things ending well, or even wellness as a general theme. But part of the attraction of the inside scoop is that we get to know and better understand the human condition as it is, rather than as we would like it to be.

Ben Franklin was one of the true geniuses of the American Revolution. In his Autobiography (as though there could, or would, be no other), he talks about being a vegetarian. He permitted himself to eat fish, however, because though they were meat, they ate each other, and were thus unsoiled by the things that usually taint other meats. How would we know this brilliant man could be so illogical were it not for his own record of his own life?

If all autobiographies were similarly entertaining, we'd read them all. They often are, but there are others (like The Lost Executioner, about a genocidal commandant of a Cambodian death camp) that we read for far different reasons. They show us the black human heart, fully exposed. We are terrified when we read these memoirs, and we weep, as often as not because we recognize ourselves in the faces of the men and women on the cover.

Memoirs, whether confessional or obscurantist, are secrets whispered from the author to the reader. Sometimes the author writes as through a megaphone, at other times as though whispering through mittened hands. It's not our job to untangle every objectively true statement from those that aren't. It's our job to listen to the words spoken, and to hear the underlying truth each memoirist conveys.

Review by C. Hollis Crossman
C. Hollis Crossman used to be a child. Now he's a husband and father who loves church, good food, and weird stuff. He might be a mythical creature, but he's definitely not a centaur. Read more of his reviews here.
Did you find this review helpful?
Parent Categories
62 Items found Print
Filter
Active Filters: 5th grade (Ages 10-11)
26 Fairmont Avenue
by Tomie De Paola
from Puffin Books
for 2nd-5th grade
in Picture Books (Location: PICTURE)
$5.94 $3.20 (2 in stock)
Ashley Bryan: Words to My Life's Song
by Ashley Bryan
First Edition from Atheneum
for 5th-7th grade
in Biographies (Location: BIO)
Boy
by Roald Dahl
from Puffin Books
for 3rd-6th grade
in Realistic Fiction (Location: FIC-REA)
$7.64
Boy
by Roald Dahl
1999 reissue from Puffin Books
for 3rd-6th grade
in Realistic Fiction (Location: FIC-REA)
Boy
by Roald Dahl
UK Edition from Puffin Books
for 3rd-6th grade
in Realistic Fiction (Location: FIC-REA)
$4.00 (1 in stock)
Boy
by Roald Dahl
2016 Edition from Puffin Books
for 3rd-6th grade
in Realistic Fiction (Location: FIC-REA)
$4.00 (1 in stock)
Boy on the Wooden Box
by Leon Leyson
Reprint from Atheneum
for 4th-8th grade
Christopher Award
in Holocaust (Location: HISW-20WW2H)
$9.99
Boy's War
by David Michell
1st edition from OMF
for 5th-8th grade
in WWII: Pacific Theater (Location: HISA-20WW2P)
$4.00 (3 in stock)
Buddy's Crazy True-Life Adventures
Buddy Davis Amazing Adventures
by Buddy Davis
from Answers in Genesis
for 3rd-6th grade
in Action & Adventure Stories (Location: FIC-ADV)
$4.80 (1 in stock)
Chasing Space for Young Readers
by Leland Melvin
from Amistad Press
for 3rd-6th grade
in Space Race & Exploration (Location: HISA-20SPR)
$9.99
Complete Book of Marvels
by Richard Halliburton
from Bobbs-Merril Co
for 3rd-Adult
in Vintage Nonfiction (Location: VIN-NFIC)
Complete Book of Marvels
by Richard Halliburton
from Bobbs-Merril Co
for 3rd-Adult
in Vintage Nonfiction (Location: VIN-NFIC)
Corrie Ten Boom
Christian Heroes: Then & Now
by Geoff & Janet Benge
from YWAM Publishing
Biography for 4th-7th grade
in Christian Heroes: Then and Now (Location: BIO-BENGE)
$10.19
Dead End in Norvelt
by Jack Gantos
from Square Fish Publishing
for 5th-8th grade
2012 Newbery Medal Winner
in Realistic Fiction (Location: FIC-REA)
Diary of Ma Yan
by Ma Yan & Pierre Haski
Reprint from HarperCollins
for 5th-7th grade
in Biographies (Location: BIO)
Fatty Legs
by Christy Jordan-Fenton, Margaret Pokiak-Fenton
from Annick Press
for 5th-7th grade
in Realistic Fiction (Location: FIC-REA)
Flying to the Moon
by Michael Collins
2nd edition from Sunburst Book
for 4th-8th grade
in Clearance: Biographies (Location: ZCLE-BIO)
$8.99
Fortunate Grandchild
by Miss Read
1st US Edition from Houghton Mifflin
for 4th-6th grade
in Historical Fiction (Location: FIC-HIF)
Gay-Neck: The Story of a Pigeon
by Dhan Gopal Mukerji
from Dutton Juvenile
for 4th-9th grade
1928 Newbery Medal winner
in Animal Stories (Location: FIC-ANI)
$11.20 (2 in stock)
Girl From Yamhill
by Beverly Cleary
from HarperCollins
for 3rd-7th grade
in Biographies (Location: BIO)
$11.04
Grain of Wheat
by Clyde Robert Bulla
Reprint from David R. Godine
for 2nd-5th grade
in Biographies (Location: BIO)
Guts
by Gary Paulsen
from Scholastic Inc.
for 4th-8th grade
in Action & Adventure Stories (Location: FIC-ADV)
$7.00 (1 in stock)
Happy Times in Norway
by Sigrid Undset, translated by Joran Birkeland
from Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
for 3rd-Adult
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
Hidden
by Fanya Gottesfeld Heller with Joshua M. Greene
from Scholastic Inc.
for 5th-8th grade
in Biographies (Location: BIO)
$2.00 (1 in stock)
Hiding Place - Young Reader's Edition
by Corrie Ten Boom, abridged by Lonnie Hull DuPont, illustrated by Tim Foley
from Chosen Books
Biography for 3rd-6th grade
in Biographies (Location: BIO)
$6.00 (1 in stock)
Homesick: My Own Story
by Jean Fritz
from PaperStar Books
Autobiography for 4th-8th grade
1983 Newbery Honor Book
in Biographies (Location: BIO)
$6.79 $3.60 (2 in stock)
Homesick: My Own Story
by Jean Fritz
from Penguin Putnam
for 4th-8th grade
in Biographies (Location: BIO)
$6.00 (1 in stock)
How I Learned Geography
by Uri Shulevitz
1st edition from Farrar, Straus and Giroux
for 2nd-5th grade
Caldecott Honor Book
in Picture Books (Location: PICTURE)
$18.69
Journey and Ordeal of Cabeza de Vaca
Dover editions
by Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca
from Dover Publications
for 5th-Adult
in Renaissance & Reformation Literature (Location: LIT3-REN)
$9.31
Kindertransport
by Olga Levy Drucker
from Scholastic Inc.
for 3rd-6th grade
in Biographies (Location: BIO)
Little Britches Series
by Ralph Moody
from University of Nebraska
Biography for 5th-9th grade
in Historical Fiction (Location: FIC-HIF)
$115.28
Lost Names
by Richard E. Kim
2nd edition from University of California Press
for 3rd-5th grade
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$23.95
March (Book One)
by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin
from Top Shelf Productions
for 5th-9th grade
Robert F. Kennedy Book Award Winner, Coretta Scott King Honor Book
in Comic Books & Graphic Novels (Location: FIC-COMIC)
$8.00 (1 in stock)
March (Book Three)
by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin; illustrated by Nate Powell
from Top Shelf Productions
for 5th-9th grade
2017 Robert F. Sibert Medal winner, Robert F. Kennedy Book Award Winner, Coretta Scott King Honor Book
in Comic Books & Graphic Novels (Location: FIC-COMIC)
$19.99
March (Book Two)
by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin
from Top Shelf Productions
for 5th-9th grade
Robert F. Kennedy Book Award Winner, Coretta Scott King Honor Book
in Comic Books & Graphic Novels (Location: FIC-COMIC)
$8.00 (1 in stock)
March - Boxed Set
by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin
from Top Shelf Productions
for 5th-9th grade
Robert F. Kennedy Book Award Winner, Coretta Scott King Honor Book
in Comic Books & Graphic Novels (Location: FIC-COMIC)
$19.20 (1 in stock)
Mexikid
by Pedro Martin
from Dial Books for Young Readers
for 5th-8th grade
in Comic Books & Graphic Novels (Location: FIC-COMIC)
$12.74
Moon & I
by Betsy Byars
from Beech Tree Books
for 5th-8th grade
in Biographies (Location: BIO)
$2.80 (2 in stock)
On My Way
from G.P. Putnam's Sons
for 2nd-5th grade
in Realistic Fiction (Location: FIC-REA)
$4.80 (1 in stock)
Oregon & Applegate Trail Diary of Welborn Beeson in 1853
by Bert Webber
for 4th-8th grade
in Oregon Trail (Location: HISA-19OR)
Patrol
by Walter Dean Myers, illustrated by Ann Grifalconi
from HarperCollins
for 3rd-6th grade
in Vietnam War (1957-1975) (Location: HISA-20VIE)
$6.00 (1 in stock)
Prairie Town Boy
by Carl Sandburg, illustrated by Joe Krush
from Harcourt
Autobiography for 5th-8th grade
in Realistic Fiction (Location: FIC-REA)
$4.00 (1 in stock)
Puppies, Dogs, and Blue Northers
by Gary Paulsen
from Scholastic Inc.
for 3rd-6th grade
in Realistic Fiction (Location: FIC-REA)
$2.80 (1 in stock)
Small Steps: The Year I Got Polio
by Peg Kehret
from Albert Whitman & Company
for 4th-6th grade
in Clearance: Biographies (Location: ZCLE-BIO)
Soup's Uncle
by Robert Newton Peck
from Yearling
for 4th-6th grade
in Realistic Fiction (Location: FIC-REA)
Story of Two Years Before the Mast
by Frank L. Beals, illustrated by E.E. King, original story by Richard H. Dana Jr.
Adapted & Retold from Benj. H. Sanborn & Co.
for 3rd-6th grade
in Vintage History & Biographies (Location: VIN-HIS)
$12.00 (1 in stock)
Tarantula in My Purse
by Jean Craighead George
from HarperCollins
for 4th-6th grade
in Realistic Fiction (Location: FIC-REA)
$2.80 (1 in stock)
That Quail, Robert
by Margaret A. Stanger
Eighth Printing, August 1966 from J.B. Lippincott Co.
for 5th-8th grade
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom
by Lynda Blackmon Lowery, Elspeth Leacock, Susan Washburn Buckley
from Speak
for 4th-8th grade
in Civil Rights Movement (1955-1968) (Location: HISA-20CIV)
$10.99
Two Years Before the Mast (abridged)
by Richard Henry Dana Jr.
from Nelson Doubleday, Inc.
for 5th-9th grade
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
Ugly: A Memoir
by Robert Hoge
from Puffin Books
for 3rd-6th grade
in Biographies (Location: BIO)
$7.64
Upon the Head of the Goat
by Aranka Siegal
First Square Fish: Aug.2012 from Farrar, Straus and Giroux
for 5th-9th grade
1982 Newbery Honor Book
in Historical Fiction (Location: FIC-HIF)
$9.99
Water Buffalo Days
by Huynh Quang Nhuong
from HarperCollins
for 4th-6th grade
in Realistic Fiction (Location: FIC-REA)
$6.79
When Stars Are Scattered
by Victoria Jamieson and Omar Mohamed
from Dial Books for Young Readers
for 3rd-6th grade
in Comic Books & Graphic Novels (Location: FIC-COMIC)
$11.89 $5.60 (1 in stock)
Where the Flame Trees Bloom
by Alma Flor Ada
from Aladdin Paperbacks
for 5th-7th grade
in Biographies (Location: BIO)
World War II Years
Readers' & Writers' Genre Workshop
by Cathleen Schurr and Charles Hipser
from Benchmark Education Co.
for 3rd-6th grade
in WWII: European Theater (Location: HISA-20WW2E)
$2.00 (1 in stock)
Yankee Doodle Boy
by Joseph Martin
from Holiday House
Historical Non-Fiction for 5th-8th grade
in American Revolution (1765-1783) (Location: HISA-18REV)
$9.99
Yankee Doodle Boy
by Joseph Martin
from Holiday House
Historical Non-Fiction for 5th-8th grade
in American Revolution (1765-1783) (Location: HISA-18REV)
$8.00 (1 in stock)
Yankee Doodle Boy
by Joseph Martin
from William R. Scott Inc.
Historical Non-Fiction for 5th-8th grade
in Vintage History & Biographies (Location: VIN-HIS)
$14.00 (1 in stock)
Yoshiko Uchida
by Yoshiko Uchida
from Julian Messner
for 3rd-8th grade
in Biographies (Location: BIO)
$4.80 (1 in stock)
Zlata's Diary
by Zlata Filipovic
from Scholastic Inc.
for 4th-8th grade
in Biographies (Location: BIO)
$2.40 (1 in stock)
Zoo Pets
by William Bridges
from William Morrow & Company
for 3rd-6th grade
in Vintage Nonfiction (Location: VIN-NFIC)
$7.00 (1 in stock)
Sign Up!

Shop

Support

Hours & Directions

Learn more about our store location and hours

Connect

503.655.1951

hello@exodusbooks.com

19146 Molalla Ave,
Oregon City, OR 97045