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H Is For Hawk
by Helen Macdonald
Grieving the sudden death of her father, writer and lifelong falconry enthusiast Helen Macdonald decides to train a goshawk, the wildest of all raptors. Her journey with the hawk, Mabel, becomes an unflinchingly honest record of her struggle with grief and "untaming." The book, destined to be a classic of nature writing, weaves Macdonald's spiritual journey with a kaleidoscopic biography of novelist T. H. White, who chronicled his own tortured attempt to train a goshawk in his book The Goshawk.
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Just Kids
by Patti Smith
In Just Kids, Patti Smith's first book of prose, the legendary American artist offers a never-before-seen glimpse of her remarkable relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in the epochal days of New York City and the Chelsea Hotel in the late sixties and seventies. An honest and moving story of youth and friendship, Smith brings the same unique, lyrical quality to Just Kids as she has to the rest of her formidable body of work--from her influential 1975 album Horses to her visual art and poetry.
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Patriot: A Memoir Alexei Navalyn; Translated By Arch Tait with Stephen Dalziel.
by Alekseæi Naval§nyæi
Written shortly after his near-fatal poisoning, Alexei Navalny's posthumous memoir, Patriot, is the powerful and moving story of his life, his commitment to challenging a tyrannical world power, and his unyielding conviction that change will come to Russia. Including correspondence from his final years in the most brutal prison on earth, this "final letter to the world" is a testament to the bravery, wit, and principles of freedom for which he paid the ultimate price.
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Born A Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood
by Trevor Noah
Trevor Noah's memoir, Born a Crime, details his improbable path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show. Born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother at a time when their union was illegal, Noah spent his early childhood hidden from a racist government. The book is both the story of a mischievous young boy finding his place in a world he wasn't meant to exist in and a tribute to his fearless, rebellious, and determined mother, who fought to save him from a life of poverty and violence.
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I Heard Her Call My Name: A Memoir of Transition
by Lucy Sante
For decades, writer Lucy Sante felt her life was a performance, presenting a façade even after finding her community among the bohemians of New York City. Her memoir, I Heard Her Call My Name, is a sensitive account of her life's arc and her recent, public transition to a place of inner and outer alignment. Sante shares with grace and honesty the challenges of learning to be a woman after sixty years cloaked in a man's identity, parsing profound issues of gender identity and self-discovery.
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Crying in H Mart: A Memoir
by Michelle Zauner
In her lyrical and honest memoir, Crying in H Mart, musician Michelle Zauner explores the bonds of family, food, and identity against the backdrop of grief. Zauner details her turbulent Korean-American upbringing in Oregon, finding solace and connection with her mother and grandmother over shared meals. It was her mother's diagnosis with terminal cancer that forced Zauner to confront her distant Koreanness, leading her to powerfully reclaim her heritage through the memories of food and the love her mother imparted.
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The Choice: Embrace the Possible
by Edith Eva Eger
It’s 1944 and sixteen-year-old ballerina and gymnast Edith Eger is sent to Auschwitz. Separated from her parents on arrival, she endures unimaginable experiences, including being made to dance for the infamous Josef Mengele. When the camp is finally liberated, she is pulled from a pile of bodies, barely alive. The horrors of the Holocaust didn’t break Edith. In fact, they helped her learn to live again with a life-affirming strength and a truly remarkable resilience.
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Notes From A Young Black Chef: A Memoir
by Kwame Onwuachi
By the time he was twenty-seven years old, Kwame Onwuachi had opened—and closed—one of the most talked about restaurants in America. He had sold drugs in New York and been shipped off to rural Nigeria to “learn respect.” He had launched his own catering company with twenty thousand dollars made from selling candy on the subway and starred on Top Chef . Through it all, Onwuachi’s love of food and cooking remained a constant, even when, as a young chef, he was forced to grapple with just how unwelcoming the food world can be for people of color. In this inspirational memoir about the intersection of race, fame, and food, he shares the remarkable story of his culinary coming-of-age; a powerful, heartfelt, and shockingly honest account of chasing your dreams—even when they don’t turn out as you expected.
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Lovely One: A Memoir
by Ketanji Brown Jackson
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson invites readers into her life, detailing her family's path from segregation to the Supreme Court. Named "Lovely One" at birth, Jackson was instilled with a resolve to honor her heritage, which propelled her through Harvard and a groundbreaking legal career. Her unflinching account marries the public record with the less known, revealing what it takes to succeed when people in power don't look like you, while balancing the joys and sacrifices of marriage and motherhood.
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Mark Twain
by Ron Chernow
From acclaimed biographer Ron Chernow comes a definitive portrait of America’s first literary celebrity, Mark Twain (born Samuel Clemens). Chernow traces Twain’s rambunctious path from a steamboat pilot and silver-mining journalist to the author of classics like The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Drawing on Twain’s extensive archives, the biography details his meticulous crafting of his famous persona, his role as the nation's leading pundit, his catastrophic business ventures, years of European exile, and the personal heartaches that marked his life. Chernow masterfully captures the magnificent, maddening, and profoundly influential figure who fully grappled with the legacy of American slavery.
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Stay True: A Memoir
by Hua Hsu
Hua Hsu's memoir, Stay True, chronicles a profound college friendship that develops between two young men navigating the complexities of their Asian American identities. Hua, the son of Taiwanese immigrants, initially views Ken as "too mainstream." Yet, their friendship, built on late-night talks and shared college life, defies Hua's first impressions. The memoir becomes a poignant act of writing, born from a need to preserve the memory of Ken after he is senselessly killed in a carjacking, exploring what it means to grow up and find a place in the world.
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Greenlights
by Matthew McConaughey
After spending forty-two years trying to work out life's riddle and thirty-five years journaling the clues, Matthew McConaughey finally collected his diaries to write the memoir, Greenlights. This "album, a record, a story of my life so far" is filled with personal stories, forgotten lessons, poems, and bumper stickers. McConaughey distills his philosophy into the reliable theme of "catching greenlights"—knowing how and when to deal with the inevitable to find greater satisfaction. It's a love letter to life and a guide to finding success even in the challenges.
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My Beloved Monster: Masha, the Half-Wild Rescue Cat Who Rescued Me
by Caleb Carr
Caleb Carr recounts his extraordinary seventeen-year relationship with Masha, a fierce Siberian Forest cat he rescued from a shelter after she had fought off all other adopters. Having grown up among the Beat Generation with cats as his steadiest companions, Carr found his ultimate connection with Masha in rural upstate New York. This love story details their life together—from Masha ruling the dangerous surrounding fields to their mutual care through long-standing ailments—proving a profound bond that defied both Masha's troubled past and Carr's human relationships.
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When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi
by David Maraniss
Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Maraniss captures the myth and the man in When Pride Still Mattered, the definitive biography of Vince Lombardi. After twenty frustrating years as a coach, Lombardi finally got his break at age forty-six, leading the struggling Green Bay Packers to five world championships in nine seasons—the most storied period in NFL history. Lombardi transformed football into a metaphor for the American experience, becoming a living legend and a symbol of leadership, discipline, and an obsession with winning.
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Leonardo da Vinci
by Walter Isaacson
Based on thousands of pages from Leonardo's astonishing notebooks and new discoveries about his life and work, Walter Isaacson weaves a narrative that connects his art to his science. He shows how Leonardo's genius was based on skills we can improve in ourselves, such as passionate curiosity, careful observation, and an imagination so playful that it flirted with fantasy. He produced the two most famous paintings in history, The Last Supper and the Mona Lisa. But in his own mind, he was just as much a man of science and technology. With a passion that sometimes became obsessive, he pursued innovative studies of anatomy, fossils, birds, the heart, flying machines, botany, geology, and weaponry. His ability to stand at the crossroads of the humanities and the sciences, made iconic by his drawing of Vitruvian Man, made him history's most creative genius
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