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Amanda Shaffer The Book That Teaches Us to Live With Our Fears
Wolfish explores the question of what, exactly, we perceive as threats.
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The Atlantic Where to Turn When You Feel ‘at Odds With Being Human’
Two recent books find, in the fluidity and endurance of marine life, respite from a world that expects conformity.
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ED JONES / AFP / Getty What Grief Tastes Like
Michelle Zauner’s Crying in H Mart shows the possibilities and limitations of the food memoir.
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Gérard DuBois The Awful Wisdom of the Hostage
What a new memoir reveals about endurance—and extreme remorse
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Natasha Trethewey / Katie Martin / The Atlantic How Poetry Can Guide Us Through Trauma
A former U.S. poet laureate’s new memoir reflects on the power of storytelling to help us grieve—and offers lessons for surviving the cataclysms of the present.
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Michael Kovac / Getty Diane Keaton’s Very Different Kind of Memoir
For her new book, Brother & Sister, the Oscar-winning actor pored over hundreds of journals, letters, and scrapbooks to tell a difficult family story.
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Peter Staley The Chaotic Elegance of Flea
In his new memoir, Acid for the Children, the Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist exhibits virtuosic vulnerability.
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Photography Tristan Brazier / Getty The Ongoing Horror of #MeToo
She Said, Catch and Kill, and other new books tell stories of monsters brought to account. But their defining mood is not exultation—it’s terror.
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Franco Origlia / Getty The Charming Candor of Julie Andrews’s New Memoir
In Home Work, the legendary actor comes to terms with an acting career she couldn’t always control.
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Celeste Sloman / The New York Times / … Debbie Harry Stares Back
The Blondie singer’s memoir, Face It, wryly recounts making the most of being ogled.
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Ali Smith / Guardian / eyevine / Redux The Paradox at the Heart of Know My Name
Chanel Miller’s memoir, like the show Unbelievable, is a reminder of the painful alchemy that turns trauma into art.
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Trevor Brady / Warner Records Tegan and Sara Rewrite the Queer Coming-of-Age Story
By revisiting their teen years, the rock duo’s new memoir, High School, and album, Hey, I’m Just Like You, dismantle cultural clichés about adolescence.
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Whitman College / The Atlantic How I Became an ‘Accidental’ Professor
My love and respect for the craft of writing fuel my commitment to teaching it. But it was a long time before I could envision academia including someone like me.
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Reuters / Courtesy E. Jean Carroll You Should Really Read E. Jean Carroll’s Memoir
What Do We Need Men For? is overwhelming. It is exhausting. That is the point.
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Doug McLean The Purgatory That Comes After Losing a Child
When his 2-year-old daughter died, Jayson Greene turned to writing to survive his grief, and to Dante’s Inferno for words to describe it.
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Felipe Dana / AP How Domestic Workers Enable Well-Off Women to Prosper
In her new book, Women’s Work, the journalist Megan Stack grapples with how she’s been able to advance in her career at the expense of other women’s labor.
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Penguin Press How to Write Poetry About Conflict
In the late ’70s, Carolyn Forché traveled to El Salvador on the eve of its civil war, knowing little about the country. Crucially, she understood how little she knew.
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d3sign / Getty The Hardship of a Very Open Adoption
In Rock Needs River, Vanessa McGrady tells of how she invited her daughter's biological parents into her own home, and everyone had to live with the consequences.
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Chip Somodevilla / Getty / Katie Martin / … Kamala Harris’s Political Memoir Is an Uneasy Fit for the Digital Era
The senator’s new book shows the difficulty of translating short-form virality into a substantive text.
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Paul Spella / The Atlantic* A Year of Miseducation
From Lauryn Hill to Cameron Post to Tara Westover, 2018 repeatedly asked the question, What does it mean to teach a person to surrender?
