Best Memoir Books

J.D. Vance traces his chaotic Appalachian upbringing — a drug-addicted mother, a stabilizing grandmother, a stint in the Marines — and his unlikely path to Yale Law School, offering a ground-level account of white working-class decline in America.

The second volume of Gerald Durrell's Corfu trilogy continues the story of the Durrell family's years on the Greek island. With the same warmth and comic genius as the first, it introduces more extraordinary animals and eccentric characters.

Actor Ewan McGregor and his friend Charley Boorman ride motorcycles east from London through Europe, Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Siberia, and Alaska to New York — 31,000 miles through some of the most extreme terrain on earth.

Kazantzakis's spiritual autobiography — addressed to his Cretan ancestor El Greco — tracing his intellectual and spiritual journey from Crete through Athens, Paris, Mount Athos, Russia, and across the battlefields of ideas of the 20th century.

The third and final volume of Gerald Durrell's Corfu trilogy, completing the story of the family's years on the Greek island before the outbreak of World War II drove them back to England.

Gerald Durrell's account of his third Cameroon expedition, during which he collected animals specifically to found his own zoo on the island of Jersey — the origin of what became the Jersey Zoo and Wildlife Preservation Trust.

George Orwell's first book: a memoir of destitution — months spent penniless in Paris, working as a plongeur in restaurant kitchens, and then weeks tramping between workhouses in England — written with the observational precision that would define everything that followed.

Anthony Doerr and his wife win the Rome Prize and spend a year at the American Academy in Rome with their newborn twin sons. A memoir about learning to see in a city built from layers of history, trying to write with two newborns, and what the death of John Paul II looks like from inside Rome.

The second volume of Maya Angelou's autobiography, covering her late teens in post-war California — working as a cook, a dancer, a madam, and eventually a prostitute, while raising her young son alone.

Bourdain's follow-up to Kitchen Confidential — a decade later, more famous, more conflicted, and harder on the food world and on himself.

Gerald Durrell's first book, an account of his animal-collecting expedition to the Cameroons in 1947-48. The book that launched his career and established his voice as one of the finest natural history writers in English.

Frances Mayes, a poet and university professor, buys a ruined villa in the Tuscan hills, restores it with her partner Ed, and discovers the rhythms of Italian rural life — its food, its seasons, its ancient craftsmanship, and its unhurried beauty.

Gerald Durrell's account of his second animal-collecting expedition to the British Cameroons in 1949, and his extraordinary friendship with the Fon of Bafut — a remarkable ruler with a taste for whisky and dancing.

Murakami has run at least one marathon a year for over twenty-five years. This memoir — written during training for the 2005 New York City Marathon — is about running, but also about writing, ageing, and the relationship between physical and mental endurance. The most personal and direct thing he has published: a self-portrait through the discipline of long-distance running.