Best Memoir Books

The Japanese Breakfast musician writes about her Korean-American identity, her mother's death from cancer, and how food became the medium for grief and memory.

Barack Obama's searingly honest memoir about race, identity, and his search for belonging across three continents.

Patti Smith's memoir of her friendship and love with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in New York City from 1967 to his death from AIDS in 1989, written as a promise to a dying friend.

David Goggins continues his life story beyond Can't Hurt Me, exploring how he pushed further into the darkest corners of his mind to unlock the next level of human potential.

Sportswriter Mitch Albom reconnects with his dying professor Morrie Schwartz for a series of life lessons delivered in the shadow of death.

Matthew McConaughey's memoir drawn from 35 years of diary entries — a personal philosophy built from the experiences, mistakes, and epiphanies of an unconventional life.

Michael Lewis's memoir of his years as a bond salesman at Salomon Brothers in the 1980s, capturing the greed and absurdity of Wall Street's most explosive decade.

Esther Greenwood, a brilliant college student in 1950s New York, descends into mental illness and attempted suicide in Sylvia Plath's semi-autobiographical masterpiece.

Jeannette Walls recounts her extraordinary childhood, raised by brilliant but dysfunctional nomadic parents who flouted convention and neglected their children's basic needs.

Joan Didion's unflinching account of the year following her husband John Gregory Dunne's sudden death while their daughter lay critically ill in the hospital.

Roxane Gay writes about her body — fat, surveilled, weaponized against her — and the sexual violence that shaped her relationship with it, with unflinching honesty and structural precision.

The founder of Bridgewater Associates shares the operating principles that guided his life and built one of the world's most successful hedge funds.

Michelle Obama shares the tools and practices that helped her navigate uncertainty — from knitting and mentorship to the value of friendship and the art of staying in your own lane.

Glennon Doyle recounts how falling in love with soccer player Abby Wambach led her to question every choice she had made and learn to trust her own inner knowing.

Matthew Perry chronicles his rise to fame on Friends and his decades-long battle with alcohol and opioid addiction in a memoir marked by self-lacerating honesty.

A collective autobiography of twentieth-century France, told through the pronoun 'one' rather than 'I,' assembling a life from photographs, memories, and the shared experience of an entire generation.

After the collapse of her marriage and her mother's death, Cheryl Strayed impulsively hiked 1,100 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail alone — unprepared, grieving, and ultimately transformed.

Will Smith's memoir traces his journey from West Philadelphia to global superstardom while exploring the fears, failures, and family dynamics that shaped him.

After a painful divorce, Elizabeth Gilbert spends a year travelling — eating in Italy, praying in India, and finding love in Bali — in this memoir that became one of the bestselling travel narratives of the century.

Gretchen Rubin spends a year methodically testing happiness-boosting strategies in twelve monthly themes — from decluttering to friendship to spirituality — and reporting what actually works.

Prince Harry's account of his life inside the British royal family, his grief at his mother's death, his marriage to Meghan Markle, and the decision to step back from royal duties.

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 private philosophical notebook of the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius — written for himself, never intended for publication — containing his Stoic practice across twelve books of thought.

Robert Caro's memoir of his career as a biographer — how he researches, how he writes, what he believes about the relationship between power and biography, and the decades he has spent trying to understand Lyndon Johnson.