By Pat Conroy
Recommended By John Shea, Library Page

“Chronicles the author’s efforts to reconcile with his harsh fighter pilot father, who inspired “The Great Santini,” recounting how at the end of his father’s life, he defended the author from his critics while helping to heal family estrangements (From the Publisher).”

By Hector Tobar
Recommended By Sonia Grgas, Reference Librarian

Presents a firsthand, official account of the 2010 survival story involving thirty-three miners who were trapped for a record sixty-nine days in a Chilean mine.

Became the movie: The 33

By Dani Shapiro

A mid–life exploration of spirituality begins with her son's difficult questions–about God, mortality and the afterlife–and Shapiro's realization that her answers are lacking, long–avoided in favor of everyday concerns. Determined to find a more satisfying set of answers, author Shapiro (Slow Motion) seeks out the help of a yogi, a Buddhist and a rabbi, and comes away with, if not the answers to life and what comes after, an insightful and penetrating memoir that readers will instantly identify with.

By George Orwell

Collects the diaries of George Orwell, chronicling the major events of his life, including the rise of totalitarianism and the death of his first wife, which influenced his writing.

By Melissa Francis
Recommended By Amy B., Children's Librarian

A memoir from the former child actress and veteran journalist describes the pride, pressure, and cruelty she felt from her ambitious stage mother while working as part of the cast of Little House on the Prairie.

By Kristin Kimball

Kimball chucked life as a Manhattan journalist to start a cooperative farm in upstate New York with a self–taught New Paltz farmer she had interviewed for a story and later married. To create a self–sustaining farm was enormously ambitious, and neighbors, while well–meaning, expected them to fail.

By Jonathan Franzen
Recommended By Donna Burger, Readers' Services Librarian

An intimate memoir by the award-winning author of The Corrections describes growing up in a family of all boys in Webster Groves, Missouri, reflecting on such topics as the dynamics of a Christian youth fellowship, the influence of Kafka's fiction on his quest to lose his virginity, his role as the school prankster, his marriage, global warming, and the life lessons he has learned from birds.”

By Dan Lyons
Recommended By Alisa Fogel, Librarian-Programming

A memoir of life inside the tech bubble by a writer and co-producer for Silicon Valley describes how, after losing his magazine writing job, he took a position with a tech company rife with cultish millennials, absent bosses, and venture-capital amenities.

By Jean Dominique Bauby
Recommended By Rosemary Moran, Senior Library Clerk

The author, former editor of French Elle magazine, describes the rare stroke to the brain stem that left his mind intact in a nearly totally paralyzed body.

Became the movie: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

By Lisa Scottoline

Scottoline, Lisa and Francesca Serritella – Does This Beach Make Me Look Fat? The mother and daughter writing team present another collection of witty, poignant, and humorous stories and essays that offer entertaining observations, insights, and relatable wisdom.

By Richard Rushfield

Documents the author's experiences at a progressive Massachusetts college, shedding his conservative California upbringing.

By Linda Gordon

Charts the iconic photographer's life from her struggles with polio and family experiences to her early career in San Francisco and rise to a chronicler of the Great Depression and World War II, exploring her growing radicalization while showcasing rare and previously suppressed images.

By Cameron Stracher

Stracher, a graduate of Harvard Law School and the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, gives a hilarious and horrifying account of his ordeal as a young associate at a major Wall Street law firm.

By Ben Macintyre

Recounts the story of the six double agents--Bronx, Brutus, Treasure, Tricycle and Garbo, who would weave a web of deception so intricate that it ensnared Hitler's army and helped to carry thousands of troops across the Channel in safety on 6 June 1944, D-Day.

By Harry Bernstein

The author’s account of his youth in Depression-era Chicago and New York.

By Barack Obama
Recommended By Amy B., Children's Librarian, Stacey Mencher, Technology and Applications Manager

The son of an African father and white American mother discusses his childhood in Hawaii, his struggle to find his identity as an African American, and his life accomplishments.

By David Sedaris

“Sedaris has a knack for turning heartbreaking antics into moments of outrageous humor… In one tale that features his mother, she cozies up to a rich old aunt in anticipation of an inheritance, and in another she locks her children outside on the fifth snow day home from school (Library Journal).”

By Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

The incredible true account of Kamila Sidiqi who, when her father and brother were forced to flee Kabul, became the sole breadwinner for her five siblings. Armed only with grit and determination, she picked up a needle and thread and created a thriving business of her own and held her family together. Genres: Adult Books for Teens; Biography/Memoir; Social Issues

By Ann Dowsett Johnston

A journalist combines in-depth research with her own personal story of recovery to investigate the psychological, social, and industry factors that have caused rising rates of alcohol abuse and binge-drinking among women and girls.

By Pete Hamill

The journalist and author recreates the hard-drinking Brooklyn-Irish lifestyle that informed every aspect of his childhood and early career, and eventually destroyed his marriage.

By Tim Bauerschmidt
Recommended By Stacey Mencher, Technology and Applications Manager

Describes how, after being advised to undergo extensive therapy for her cancer diagnosis, ninety-year-old Miss Norma decides to skip the hospital bed and instead travel the country with her retired son Tim, his wife Ramie, and their dog Ringo.

By Augusten Burroughs
Recommended By Amy B., Children's Librarian

“An advertising executive remembers his childhood with his eccentric foster family and his early adulthood experiences of trying to establish an independent life for himself (From the Publisher).”

By Judith St. George

Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr were intertwined for some twenty-five years, with their resentments and misunderstandings culminating in a tragic duel.

By Robert D. Matzen

Near the end of 1939, ten–year–old Audrey Hepburn flew from boarding school in England into the Netherlands, which would soon become a war zone. What she experienced in five years of Nazi occupation has never been explored until now. Dutch Girl sets the story straight, revealing the Nazi past of Audrey's parents and how their daughter dealt with this information.

By Robert M. Gates

The former Secretary of Defense and director of the CIA recounts his service under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, describing his roles in such major events as the Bin Laden raid, the Guantánamo Bay controversy and the WikiLeaks scandal.

By Susan Butler

A comprehensive biography recounts Earhart’s varied life as a social worker, fashion plate, wife, and pilot, and dispels the myths surrounding her disappearance in 1938.

By Elizabeth Gilbert
Recommended By Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian
With Lisa Jones, Readers' Services Librarian

Tuesday, November 30, 2010.  1 PM & 7:30 PM.

After a failed marriage Gilbert sets off to discover her true self by eating in Italy, praying in India and finding love in Indonesia.

Became the movie: Eat, Pray, Love.

By Hermoine Lee

A critical biography of one of America's greatest writers describes Wharton's adventure-filled travels in Europe, the literary and artistic circles in which she lived and worked, her heroism during World War I, and the evolution of her writing.

By Margaret B. McDowell

Offers a critical introduction to the life and work of the American author.

By Tara Westover
Recommended By Jackie, Head of Readers' Services, Neela Vass, Head of Acquisitions
With Jackie Ranaldo, Head of Readers' Services

Tuesday, February 26, 2019. 1:30 PM.

Traces the author's experiences as a child born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, describing her participation in her family's paranoid stockpiling activities and her resolve to educate herself well enough to earn acceptance into a prestigious university and the unfamiliar world beyond.

By Shilpa Raj
Recommended By Neela Vass, Head of Acquisitions

When you are a female born into a poor Indian family, the odds are already stacked greatly against you. The human drama captured in this memoir is nothing short of amazing - a young woman's struggle between the two worlds of her existence. Saved by her grandmother from being killed at birth for being a female, and abandoned by her mother at a young age, Shilpa faces the formidable constraints placed on her by her family and the village elders. The values with which she is being brought up in a school for poor children started by a philanthropist come in conflict with those of her family, tearing each other apart. Just when all seems settled, an unforeseen death under mysterious circumstances shatters whatever stability remains in her life. Pulled in opposite directions, and torn between despair and dreams, Shilpa finally makes a choice for her escape. But is she strong enough to stand up to the people she loves, and pursue what she wants? At its heart The Elephant Chaser's Daughter is about hope, when all seems lost. Written with raw honesty and grit, this is a deeply moving memoir of a young woman confronting her 'untouchable' status in a caste-based society, and her aspirations for a good future.

By Lori D. Ginzberg

A close look into the life of a woman of extraordinary intellectual gifts who turned the limitations placed on women like herself into a universal philosophy of equal rights.

By Alison Weir

This first in-depth biography of the first Tudor queen, who was the only living descendent of Yorkist King Edward IV, and mother of the infamous Henry VIII, sheds new light on the life of this enigmatic woman and mother of the Tudor dynasty.

By Ellis Cashmore

Uses the English-born Hollywood star as a lens through which to examine the social changes that have yielded what we now call celebrity culture.

By Edward J. Larson

Examines the pioneering Antarctic expeditions of the early twentieth century within the context of a larger scientific, social, and geopolitical context.

By Stephanie Madoff Mack

The widow of Mark Madoff and daughter-in-law of Bernard Madoff presents an insider's account as an unsuspecting member of the family associated with the audacious Ponzi scheme, describing her idyllic marriage, her belief in her husband's innocence, their ordeals at the height of the media frenzy and her husband's tragic suicide.

By Anne Richardson Roiphe

Traces the author’s loss of her beloved husband, her experiences with grief and widowhood, and her efforts to make new friends when her daughters placed a singles ad for her in a literary journal.

By Blaine Harden
Recommended By Jackie, Head of Readers' Services

Presents a dramatic account by one of the few survivors born in North Korea's infamous political prison camps, describing the brutal conditions he was forced to endure as a child, his witnessing of his family's executions, and his final, harrowing escape.

By Nick Gray
Recommended By Neela Vass, Head of Acquisitions

Two brothers face cruelty, hardship, and hope, on the ultimate journey in search of freedom.

By Donald Hall

A former poet laureate presents a new collection of essays delivering a gloriously unexpected view from the vantage point of very old age.

By Regina Calcaterra
Recommended By Neela Vass, Head of Acquisitions, Jean Buchholtz, Library Clerk, Amy B., Children's Librarian

“A tenacious lawyer, state official, and activist records her childhood in foster homes and on the streets with her four siblings, revealing a life of horrible abuse in the shadows between Manhattan and the Hamptons (From the Publisher).”

By Kate Bowler
Recommended By Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian

A divinity professor and young mother diagnosed with Stage IV cancer shares her perspectives on friendship, love, and death while describing her efforts to remain true to her faith in spite of impossible hardships.

By Dolly Alderton

The award–winning Sunday Times columnist and co–host of The High Low podcast presents a U.S. release of her internationally best–selling memoir about growing up, aging and learning to navigate relationships and a career.

By Robert Meeropol

The son of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, who were executed when he was six years old, describes the gift and burden that was his parents' legacy, including his effort to raise a healthy family and his work as a political activist.

By Justine Bateman

Based on "older face" experiences of the author, Justine Bateman, and those of dozens of women and men she interviewed, the book presents the reader with the many root causes for society’s often negative attitudes toward women’s older faces. In doing so, Bateman rejects those ingrained assumptions about the necessity of fixing older women’s faces, suggesting that we move on from judging someone’s worth based on the condition of her face.

By H. Jon Benjamin

Chronicles humorous stories of failure from the early days, romantic life, family, and career of the author.

By RoseMarie Terenzio

A former personal assistant to John F. Kennedy, Jr. shares the story of their professional relationship and close friendship, describing how she landed her job under less-than-ideal circumstances, Kennedy's political beliefs, and his untimely death.

By Stacy Morrison

Stacy Morrison, the editor-in-chief of "Redbook," tells the emotionally charged story of her divorce and the gift of grace it brought her.

By Justine Bateman
Recommended By Sharon Long, Assistant Library Director

A passionate and critical analysis of the life cycle of Fame, from film producer/director and former worldwide TV star Justine Bateman.

By Lloyd Handwerker
Recommended By Lisa H., Readers' Services Librarian

Traces the rise of Nathan’s Famous from a small Coney Island concession on an undeveloped boardwalk to an international brand, tracing founder Nathan Handwerker’s flight from World War I-stricken Europe and his menial jobs in 1912 New York before building an empire that has become the object of a heated legal dispute.