Memoir Essays

When physical disability from combat wounds brought about Jim Stockdale's early retirement from military life, he had the distinction of being the only three-star officer in the history of the navy to wear both aviator wings and the Congressional Medal of Honor. His writings have been many and varied, but all converge on the central theme of how man can rise with dignity to prevail in the face of adversity.

Flailing in jobs, failing at love, getting addicted and un-addicted to people, food, and drugs - I'll Tell You in Person is a disarmingly frank account of attempts at adulthood and all the less than perfect ways we get there. Chloe Caldwell has an unsparing knack for looking within and reporting back what's really there, rather than what she'd like you to see.

This book will make you laugh! In these tense times of uncertainty and division, this remarkable book is just what the doctor ordered! The book is filled with hilarious and humorously told stories. A self-described nerd, the author recounts his experiences growing up in the '50s and the endless predicaments he has found himself in throughout his life. From spending formative years as a missionary in Japan to learning life lessons in Las Vegas, Mancini's antics seem never-ending. His days looking for love, as he says in all the wrong places, are very funny. You will surely laugh at the ...

Zelda Fitzgerald was the mythical American Dream Girl of the Roaring Twenties who became, in the words of her husband, F. Scott Fitzgerald, "the first American flapper." Their romance transformed a symbol of glamour and spectacle of the Jazz Age. When Zelda cracked up, not long after the stock market crash of 1929, Scott remained loyal to her through a nightmare of later breakdowns and final madness.

How to Write an Autobiographical Novel is the author's manifesto on the entangling of life, literature, and politics, and how the lessons learned from a life spent reading and writing fiction have changed him. In these essays, he grows from student to teacher, reader to writer, and reckons with his identities as a son, a gay man, a Korean American, an artist, an activist, a lover, and a friend. He examines some of the most formative experiences of his life and the nation's history.

In this autobiography, woven from personal pieces composed over the course of a celebrated writing life of more than 50 years, you'll meet William Buckley the boy, growing up in a family of 10 children; Buckley the daring young political enfant terrible, whose debut book, God and Man at Yale, was a shocking New York Times best seller; Buckley the editor of National Review, widely hailed as the founder of the modern conservative movement; and Buckley the husband and father.

A Finalist for the NAACP Image Award Longlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay An NPR Best Book of the Year A Washington Independent Review of Books Favorite of the Year From the cofounder of VerySmartBrothas.com, and one of the most read writers on race and...

Throughout her life, Elissa Washuta has been surrounded by cheap facsimiles of Native spiritual tools and occult trends, "starter witch kits" of sage, rose quartz, and tarot cards packaged together in paper and plastic. Following a decade of abuse, addiction, PTSD, and heavy-duty drug treatment for a misdiagnosis of bipolar disorder, she felt drawn to the real spirits and powers her dispossessed and discarded ancestors knew, while she undertook necessary work to find love and meaning.

Bestselling author and renowned professor Mary Karr offers a master class in the essential elements of great memoir—delivered with her signature wit, insight, and candor. Credited with sparking the current memoir explosion, Mary Karr’s The Liars’ Club spent more than a year at the top of...

A new collection from David Sedaris is cause for jubilation. His recent move to Paris has inspired hilarious pieces, including Me Talk Pretty One Day, about his attempts to learn French. His family is another inspiration. You Cant Kill the Rooster is a portrait of his brother who talks incessant...

In Furiously Happy, #1 New York Times bestselling author Jenny Lawson explores her lifelong battle with mental illness. A hysterical, ridiculous book about crippling depression and anxiety? That sounds like a terrible idea. But terrible ideas are what Jenny does best. As Jenny says: "Some people...

A humorous collection of autobiographical essays from comedian and Somebody Somewhere actor Jeff Hiller, who shares his journey from growing up “profoundly gay” in 1980s Texas to his experiences as an inept social worker and how he clawed, scraped, and brawled to Hollywood’s lower...

NAMED MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2026 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES, NPR, TIME, LIT HUB, VULTURE, and more The sexual assault that stunned the world. A courageous woman’s rallying call for shame to "change sides." For the very first time, Gisèle Pelicot tells her story. In 2024, Gisèle Pelicot waived...

In this exuberantly praised book - a collection of seven pieces on subjects ranging from television to tennis, from the Illinois State Fair to the films of David Lynch, from postmodern literary theory to the supposed fun of traveling aboard a Caribbean luxury cruiseliner - David Foster Wallace...

Acclaimed journalist Julia Ioffe tells the story of modern Russia through the history of its women, from revolution to utopia to autocracy. In 1990, seven-year-old Julia Ioffe and her family fled the Soviet Union. Nearly twenty years later, Ioffe returned to Moscow—only to discover just how...

A darkly comic memoir-in-essays about the scam of the American Dream and doing whatever it takes to survive in the Sunshine State—from the award-winning author of High-Risk Homosexual “Relatable, funny and deeply heartfelt, this memoir is one not to miss.”—Today “Edgar Gomez is a young...

Celebrated as the "greatest descriptive writer of her time" (Rebecca West), Jan Morris has been dazzling fans since she burst on the scene with her on-the-spot reportage of the first ascent of Everest in 1953. Now, the beloved 92-year-old, author of classics such as Venice and Trieste, embarks on an entirely new literary enterprise - a collection of daily diaries, penned over the course of a single year.

From global art superstar Kent Monkman and his long-time collaborator Gisèle Gordon, a transformational work of true stories and imagined history that will remake readers’ understanding of the land called North America. For decades, the singular and provocative paintings by Cree artist Kent...

At once a powerful evocation of his early life in Harlem and a disturbing examination of the consequences of racial injustice to both the individual and the body politic, James Baldwin galvanized the nation in the early days of the civil rights movement with this eloquent manifesto. The Fire Next Time stands as one of the essential works of our literature.

In The Land and Its People, his collection following Happy-Go-Lucky, David Sedaris reflects on what it means to be a foreigner, a brother, a lifelong friend. He tries on the role of caretaker after his boyfriend Hugh’s hip-replacement surgery, and both succeeds and fails. He buys his sister a...