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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.
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84, Charing Cross Road
by Helene Hanff
from Penguin Random House
for 9th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$16.00
Account of Mary Rowlandson and Other Indian Captivity Narratives
by Mary Rowlandson
from Dover Publications
for 9th-Adult
in 17th Century Literature (Location: LIT4-17)
$5.91
Adventures of Theodore Roosevelt
by Theodore Roosevelt
from National Geographic
for 9th-Adult
in Clearance: Biographies (Location: ZCLE-BIO)
$11.20
American Childhood
by Annie Dillard
from Harper & Row
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$6.00 (1 in stock)
Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge
by Calvin Coolidge
from National Notary Association
for 9th-Adult
in Biographies (Location: BIO)
$9.00 (1 in stock)
Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge
by Calvin Coolidge, Edited with an Introduction by Amity Shlaes and Matthew Denhart
from ISI Books
for 9th-Adult
in Biographies (Location: BIO)
$29.99 $15.00 (1 in stock)
Autobiography of Charles G. Finney
by Charles G. Finney
from Bethany House
Autobiography for 9th-Adult
in Biographies (Location: BIO)
$18.00
Autobiography of Charles G. Finney
by Charles G. Finney
from Bethany House
Autobiography for 9th-Adult
in History for Adults (Location: ADU-HIS)
$4.00 (1 in stock)
Autobiography of G. K. Chesterton
by G. K. Chesterton
from Ignatius Press
Autobiography for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$16.11
Autobiography of George Muller
by George Muller
from Whitaker House
Biography for 11th-Adult
in Biographies (Location: BIO)
$8.49
Between the Lines
by Tom and Delphine Frazier
from Regent Press
for Adult
in History for Adults (Location: ADU-HIS)
$6.40 (1 in stock)
Black Like Me
by John Howard Griffin & Robert Bonazzi
35th anniversary from Signet Classics
for 8th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$9.99 $6.00 (1 in stock)
Blood Brothers
by Elias Chacour with David Hazard
2022 Printing from Baker Books
for 9th-12th grade
in Near & Middle East (Location: HISMC-NME)
$16.14
Blue Like Jazz
by Donald Miller
from Thomas Nelson Publishers
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$3.00 (3 in stock)
Book of Margery Kempe
by Margery Kempe
1st edition from Penguin Classics
for 10th-Adult
in Medieval Literature (Location: LIT2-MED)
$5.00 (1 in stock)
Born Again
by Charles Colson
from Chosen Books
for 9th grade-Adult
in Biographies (Location: BIO)
$16.99
Born Free
by Joy Adamson
Anniversary from Pantheon Books
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$17.00
Born to Run
by Christopher McDougall
from Vintage Books
for 9th-Adult
in Biography Anthologies (Location: BIO-ANTH)
$4.80 (1 in stock)
Boy
by Roald Dahl
from Puffin Books
for 3rd-6th grade
in Realistic Fiction (Location: FIC-REA)
$7.64
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)
$8.49 $4.80 (1 in stock)
Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
by Bryan Mealer, William Kamkwamba
from Harper Perennial
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$15.99
Boy's War
by David Michell
1st edition from OMF
for 5th-8th grade
in WWII: Pacific Theater (Location: HISA-20WW2P)
$3.20 (3 in stock)
Breakfast with Bonhoeffer
by Jon Walker
from Leafwood Publishing
for 9th-Adult
in Practical Christian Living (Location: XCL-PRAC)
$6.00 (1 in stock)
Brendan Voyage
Modern Library Exploration
by Tim Severin
from Modern Library
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
Bridge to the Sun
by Gwen Terasaki
from Rock Creek Books
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$15.99
Bruchko
by Bruce Olson
Updated from Charisma House
for 10th-Adult
in Biographies (Location: BIO)
$4.00 (1 in stock)
Bruchko and the Motilone Miracle
by Bruce Olson
from Charisma House
Biography for 10th-Adult
in Biographies (Location: BIO)
$12.74
Chasing Space for Young Readers
by Leland Melvin
from Amistad Press
for 3rd-6th grade
in Space Race & Exploration (Location: HISA-20SPR)
$8.49
Children of the Storm
by Natasha Vins
from Bob Jones University Press
Autobiography for 8th-10th grade
in Biographies (Location: BIO)
$7.64
Co. Aytch
by Sam Watkins
from Touchstone
Historical Non-fiction for 8th-Adult
in American Civil War Era (1850-1865) (Location: HISA-19CW)
$14.45
Confessions
by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
from Penguin Classics
for 10th-Adult
in 18th Century Literature (Location: LIT5-18)
$11.05
Confessions of St. Augustine
by Saint Augustine (translation by Henry Chadwick)
from Oxford University
for 10th-Adult
in Medieval Literature (Location: LIT2-MED)
$6.76
Conversations with Myself
by Nelson Mandela, foreword by Barack Obama
from Picador
for Adult
in History for Adults (Location: ADU-HIS)
$3.20 (1 in stock)
Devil at My Heels
by Louis Zamperini and David Rensin, foreword by John McCain
from William Morrow & Company
for 8th-12th grade
in Biographies (Location: BIO)
$6.40 (1 in stock)
Diary of a Napoleanic Foot Soldier
by Jakob Walter
from Penguin Putnam
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$5.20 (1 in stock)
Down and Out in Paris and London
by George Orwell
from Mariner Books
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$15.99
Egg and I
by Betty MacDonald
from HarperCollins
Biography for 8th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$15.99
Escape from Slavery
by Frederick Douglass, edited and illustrated by Michael McCurdy, foreword by Coretta Scott King
from Beautiful Feet Books
for 6th-8th grade
in Biographies (Location: BIO)
$11.89 $7.20 (1 in stock)
Everlasting is the Past
by Walter Wangerin
from Rabbit Room Press
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$14.95
Every Falling Star
by Sungju Lee and Susan McClelland
from Amulet Books
for 6th-9th grade
in Biographies (Location: BIO)
$8.49
First They Killed My Father
by Loung Ung
from Harper Perennial
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$16.99
First Voyage to America
by Christopher Columbus
from Dover Publications
Historical Primary Sources for 10th-Adult
in Age of Exploration (1450-1700) (Location: HISA-16EXP)
$8.46
Four Voyages
by Christopher Columbus
from Penguin Classics
Historical Primary Sources for 9th-Adult
in Renaissance & Reformation Literature (Location: LIT3-REN)
$14.45
Girl From Yamhill
by Beverly Cleary
from HarperCollins
for 3rd-7th grade
in Biographies (Location: BIO)
$11.04
God of the Garden
by Andrew Peterson
from B&H Books
for 10th-Adult
in Creating Culture (Location: XCU-CRE)
$15.29
Going Solo
by Roald Dahl
from Puffin Books
for 7th-9th grade
in Realistic Fiction (Location: FIC-REA)
$7.64 $3.60 (1 in stock)
Going Solo
by Roald Dahl
from Puffin Books
for 7th-9th grade
in Realistic Fiction (Location: FIC-REA)
$4.00 (1 in stock)
Good-Bye To All That
by Robert Graves, introduction by Paul Fussell
from Vintage Books
for Adult
in Biographies (Location: BIO)
$4.80 (1 in stock)
Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners
by John Bunyan
from Penguin Classics
for 10th-Adult
in 17th Century Literature (Location: LIT4-17)
$12.75
Grief Observed
by C. S. Lewis, with a foreword by Madeleine L'Engle
from HarperCollins
Death/Grief for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$15.29
Heavenly Man
by Brother Yun, Paul Hattaway
from Monarch Books
for 10th-Adult
in Clearance: Biographies (Location: ZCLE-BIO)
$11.89 $6.00 (1 in stock)
Heidi's Alp
by Christina Hardyment
from Atlantic Monthly Press
for Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$5.00 (1 in stock)
Hiding Place
by Corrie Ten Boom
35th Anniversary Edition from Chosen Books
Biography for 6th-10th grade
in Biographies (Location: BIO)
$15.29
Hole in Our Gospel
by Richard Stearns
from Thomas Nelson Publishers
for Adult
in Clearance: Christian Books (Location: XCLE)
$3.50 (3 in stock)
Homage to Catalonia
by George Orwell
from Mariner Books
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$19.99
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 (1 in stock)
In My Father's House
by Corrie Ten Boom
Book Club Edition from Power Books
for 9th-Adult
in Biographies (Location: BIO)
$3.20 (1 in stock)
In the Land of the Blue Burqas
by Kate McCord
from Moody Press
for 11th-Adult
in Biographies (Location: BIO)
$13.59
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
by Harriet Jacobs
from Dover Publications
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$5.00 $3.00 (1 in stock)
Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano
by Olaudah Equiano
from Modern Library
for 10th-Adult
in 18th Century Literature (Location: LIT5-18)
$12.75
Jack Nastyface
by William Robinson
from US Naval Institute Press
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$5.60 (1 in stock)
Jarhead
by Anthony Swofford
from Scribner
for Adult
in History for Adults (Location: ADU-HIS)
$4.00 (1 in stock)
Jeanne Guyon
by Jeanne Guyon
1st Ed. from Whitaker House
for 10th-Adult
in Biographies (Location: BIO)
$6.00 (1 in stock)
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
Junior Officer's Reading Club
by Patrick Hennessey
from Riverhead Books
for Adult
in History for Adults (Location: ADU-HIS)
$4.80 (1 in stock)
Kisses from Katie
by Katie J. Davis
from Howard Books
for Adult
in Biographies (Location: BIO)
$16.14
Left to Tell
by Immaculée Ilibagiza with Steve Erwin
from Hay House
for Adult
in History for Adults (Location: ADU-HIS)
$4.00 (1 in stock)
Letters and Papers from Prison
by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
from Simon and Schuster
Biography for Adult
in Practical Christian Living (Location: XCL-PRAC)
$14.45
Life and Diary of David Brainerd
by David Brainerd
from Baker Books
Biography for 10th-Adult
in Biographies (Location: BIO)
$14.45
Life of Josiah Henson
by Josiah Henson
from Dover Publications
for 9th-Adult
in Biographies (Location: BIO)
$4.25
Lord God Made Them All
by James Herriot
from St. Martin's Press
for 7th-Adult
in Animal Stories (Location: FIC-ANI)
$17.00
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
Man's Search for Meaning - Young Readers edition
by Viktor E. Frankl; foreword by John Boyne
from Beacon Press
for 6th-12th grade
in Holocaust (Location: HISW-20WW2H)
$10.19
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 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)
Meditations
by Marcus Aurelius
from Modern Library
Classic Literature for 9th-Adult
in Ancient Literature (Location: LIT1-ANC)
$9.35
Mein Kampf
by Adolf Hitler, translated by Michael Ford
from Elite Minds, Inc.
Autobiography for 9th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$29.95
Memoirs of Gluckel of Hameln
by Gluckel of Hamelin
from Schocken
for 8th-Adult
in 17th Century Literature (Location: LIT4-17)
$14.45
Memoirs of the Second World War
by Winston S. Churchill, abridged by Denis Kelly
from HarperCollins
for 10th-Adult
in History for Adults (Location: ADU-HIS)
$22.09
Mexikid
by Pedro Martin
from Dial Books for Young Readers
for 5th-8th grade
in Comic Books & Graphic Novels (Location: FIC-COMIC)
$12.74
Mimosa
by Amy Carmichael
from Christian Literature Crusade
for 9th-Adult
in History of Missions (Location: XCH-MIS)
$11.99
Mountain Boyhood
by Joe Mills, introduction and notes by James H. Pickering, illustrated by Enos B. Comstock
from University of Nebraska
for 6th-12th grade
in Biographies (Location: BIO)
$5.00 (1 in stock)
My Family and Other Animals
by Gerald Durrell
from Penguin Classics
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$18.00
My Heart Lies South
by Elizabeth Borton de Treviño
Young People's Edition from Bethlehem Books
Biography for 8th-12th grade
in Historical Fiction (Location: FIC-HIF)
$12.71 $8.00 (1 in stock)
Napoleon's Russian Campaign
by Count Philippe-Paul de Segur
from Time-Life Books
for 11th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$2.00 (1 in stock)
Narrative of the Life of David Crockett of the State of Tennessee
by David Crockett
Reprint from Bison Books
for 9th-Adult
in Biographies (Location: BIO)
$14.41 $6.80 (1 in stock)
Never Sniff A Gift Fish
by Patrick F. McManus
from Henry Holt and Company
for 8th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$17.99 $7.50 (1 in stock)
New York to Nome
by Rick Steber, Photography by Sheldon Taylor
2007 Revised from Bonanza Publishing
for 8th-Adult
in 20th Century Exploration (Location: HISW-20EXP)
$7.20 (1 in stock)
Night
by Elie Wiesel
Revised from Hill & Wang
Autobiographies & Memoirs for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$13.00 $4.00 (9 in stock)
Omoo
by Herman Melville
from Dover Publications
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$9.31
Oregon Trail
by Rinker Buck
from Simon and Schuster
for Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$17.84
Orthodoxy
by C. K. Chesterton
from Moody Press
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$8.49 $4.00 (1 in stock)
Persepolis
by Marjane Satrapi
1st edition from Pantheon Books
for 10th-Adult
in Comic Books & Graphic Novels (Location: FIC-COMIC)
$6.40 (2 in stock)
Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant
Penguin Classics
by Ulysses S. Grant
from Penguin Classics
Autobiography for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$19.00
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
by Annie Dillard
from HarperCollins
Meditation/Philosophy for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$16.14 $7.20 (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)
Road to Wigan Pier
by George Orwell
from Mariner Books
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$16.99
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