Biography and Memoir
March 2026

Recent Releases
After the Flood: Inside Bob Dylan's Memory Palace
by Robert Polito

Biographer Robert Polito refutes the popularly accepted version of Bob Dylan’s late-career output in After the Flood. Although critical reception of his work has been up and down over the last few decades, Polito instead asserts that Dylan has produced some of the most challenging work of his life in this time frame, including powerful retellings from the Great American Songbook, two books, paintings, and over 3,000 concerts. Try this next: I’m Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen by Sylvie Simmons. 
 
Bernie for Burlington: The Rise of the People's Politician
by Dan Chiasson

Poet, journalist, and Burlington, Vermont native Dan Chiasson remembers growing up in the small city that a young Brooklynite named Bernie Sanders adopted as his hometown. Chiasson recalls that Sanders was seen as a tad eccentric when he first ran for mayor, yet he was able to garner support on complex local issues while earning a reputation as a fearless underdog’s champion. For fans of: Pete Buttigieg’s Shortest Way Home: One Mayor’s Challenge and a Model for America’s Future. 
 
Black Bear: A Story of Siblinghood and Survival by Trina Moyles
Black Bear: A Story of Siblinghood and Survival
by Trina Moyles

A dazzling memoir about one woman's coexistence with bears in the boreal forest and a singular meditation on sibling loss.  Impassioned and eloquent, Black Bear is a story of grief and a vision of peaceful coexistence in a divided world. It captures the fragility of our relationships with human and nonhuman species alike, and the imperative to protect the wild--along with the people we hold closest.
Black Dahlia: Murder, Monsters, and Madness in Midcentury Hollywood
by William J. Mann

Biographer William J. Mann's (Bogie & Bacall) well-researched true crime account offers fresh insights on the 1947 murder of actress Elizabeth Short, who posthumously came to be known by the moniker "Black Dahlia." Further reading: Sisters in Death: The Black Dahlia, the Prairie Heiress, and Their Hunter by Eli Frankel. 
 
The Flower Bearers
by Rachel Eliza Griffiths

Novelist and poet Rachel Eliza Griffiths (Promise) grapples with the twin tragedies of the highly publicized and near-fatal attack on her new husband Salman Rushdie and, less than a year earlier, the sudden death of her closest friend, poet Kamilah Aisha Moon, who ironically passed away on Griffiths’ wedding day. For another emotional memoir about enduring wrenching loss, try Elizabeth Gilbert’s All the Way to the River. 
 
Fly, Wild Swans: My Mother, Myself and China
by Jung Chang

In Fly, Wild Swans, Chinese British memoirist and historian Jung Chang channels harrowing memories of her childhood during China’s Cultural Revolution. Years later she was banished from her native country after publishing an unsparing biography of Mao Zedong, a ruling which prevents her from returning to visit her dying mother. Readers may wish to pair this book with Chang’s previous bestselling memoir Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China. 
 
Future Boy: Back to the Future and My Journey Through the Space-Time Continuum by Michael J. Fox
Future Boy: Back to the Future and My Journey Through the Space-Time Continuum
by Michael J. Fox

A poignant, heartfelt, and funny memoir about how, in 1985, Michael J. Fox brought to life two iconic roles simultaneously--Alex P. Keaton in Family Ties and Marty McFly in Back to the Future.
Homeschooled: A New York Times Bestselling Memoir and Read with Jenna Pick by Stefan Merrill Block
Homeschooled: A Memoir
by Stefan Merrill Block

Stefan Merrill Block was nine when his mother pulled him from school, certain that his teachers were 'stifling his creativity.' Hungry for more time with her boy who was growing up too quickly, she began to instruct Stefan in the family's living room. Stefan vanished into that unseen space and into his mother's increasingly eccentric theories and projects. [So] when, after five years away from the outside world, Stefan reentered the public school system in Plano as a freshman, he was in for a jarring awakening--
Michelangelo and Titian: A Tale of Rivalry and Genius
by William E. Wallace

Artistic competition bears creative fruit in art historian William E. Wallace’s dramatic tale of how the two giants of Italian Renaissance painting inspired each other to ever greater heights of accomplishment. Although they only met on two occasions, Wallace’s “captivating study” (Publishers Weekly) shows how each single-monikered master kept tabs on his rival through the intrigue-rich courts of local nobles and patrons, to the benefit of all. 
 
Winter: The Story of a Season by Val McDermid
Winter: The Story of a Season
by Val McDermid

"[The author] delivers a dazzling ode to a lost world, ruminating on a single winter in her life as she journeys into the heart of the season's ever-evolving community-based traditions."
Contact Reference at prkref@parkridgelibrary.org for more great recommendations!  Or fill out this Book Match form and a librarian will email you a personalized list of reading suggestions!
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