Top 100 Biographies and Memoirs to Read in a Lifetime

Honestly, it would take many lifetimes to read even a small fraction of the best biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs ever written. So when the Amazon Books editors set out to compile a list of the 100 Biographies and Memoirs to Read in a (Single) Lifetime, we knew up front that we would be making some tough--even contentious--choices. But after the dust settled, we found ourselves with a hundred stories of our greatest artists, seekers, and iconic leaders, as well as a host of other iconoclasts, athletes, and adventurers (and even a non-human or three). Many of these read like great novels; some technically are, their authors shrouding their experiences within the cloak of fiction (but we all know better). Whether you're coming to these books for the first time or revisiting them, we hope you'll find a lifetime's worth of inspiration and discovery.


1
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
by Dave Eggers
3.1 avg rating, 1079 reviews, 2001-02-13

2
A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier
by Ishmael Beah
4.6 avg rating, 1848 reviews, 2008-08-05

3
A Moveable Feast: The Restored Edition
by Ernest Hemingway
4 avg rating, 945 reviews, 2010-07-20

4
A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail
by Bill Bryson
4.4 avg rating, 7304 reviews, 2006-12-26

5
American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880 – 1964
by William Manchester
4.6 avg rating, 439 reviews, 2008-05-12

6
AMERICAN LION: Andrew Jackson in the White House
by Jon Meacham
4 avg rating, 587 reviews, 2009-04-30

7
American Prometheus
by Kai Bird
4.6 avg rating, 340 reviews, 2006-04-11

8
American Sniper
by Martin J. Sherwin
4.6 avg rating, 15624 reviews, 2013-01-29

9
American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson
by Chris Kyle
4.1 avg rating, 250 reviews, 1998-04-07

10
Angela’s Ashes: A Memoir
by Scott McEwen
4.4 avg rating, 2138 reviews, 1999-05-25

11
Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl
by Anne Frank
4.6 avg rating, 2574 reviews, 1993-06-01

12
Autobiography of a Face
by Lucy Grealy
4.2 avg rating, 237 reviews, 2003-03-18

13
Autobiography of Mark Twain
by Mark Twain
4.1 avg rating, 504 reviews, 2010-11-15

14
Ball Four: Twentieth Anniversary Edition
by Jim Bouton
4.3 avg rating, 519 reviews, 1990-07-12

15
Black Boy: A Record of Childhood and Youth
by Richard Wright
4.4 avg rating, 893 reviews, 2007-03-27

16
Black Like Me
by John Howard Griffin
4.7 avg rating, 584 reviews, 2010-10-20

17
Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life
by Steve Martin
4.4 avg rating, 1083 reviews, 2008-09-02

18
Born to Run
by Christopher McDougall
4.7 avg rating, 3919 reviews, 2011-03-29

19
Bossypants
by Tina Fey
4.3 avg rating, 4829 reviews, 2013-01-29

20
Cash: The Autobiography
by Johnny Cash
4.6 avg rating, 216 reviews, 2003-10-07

21
Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman
by Robert K. Massie
4.5 avg rating, 1375 reviews, 2012-09-18

22
Chronicles
by Bob Dylan
4.4 avg rating, 604 reviews, 2005-09-13

23
Churchill: A Life
by Martin Gilbert
4.5 avg rating, 440 reviews, 1992-10-15

24
Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice
by Phillip Hoose
4.6 avg rating, 105 reviews, 2010-12-21

25
Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness
by William Styron
4.4 avg rating, 508 reviews, 1992-01-08

26
De Profundis and Other Prison Writings
by Oscar Wilde
3.5 avg rating, 28 reviews, 2013-04-30

27
Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood
by Alexandra Fuller
4.3 avg rating, 727 reviews, 2003-03-11

28
Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This?
by Marion Meade
4.2 avg rating, 106 reviews, 1989-03-03

29
Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
by Barack Obama
4.3 avg rating, 1601 reviews, 2004-08-10

30
Drinking: A Love Story
by Caroline Knapp
4.5 avg rating, 476 reviews, 1997-05-12

31
Dust Tracks on a Road: An Autobiography
by Zora Neale Hurston
4.4 avg rating, 98 reviews, 2006-01-03

32
E=mc2: A Biography of the World’s Most Famous Equation
by David Bodanis
4.3 avg rating, 217 reviews, 2001-10-01

33
Eat, Pray, Love
by Elizabeth Gilbert
4.3 avg rating, 4360 reviews, 2007-01-30

34
Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage
by Alfred Lansing
4.8 avg rating, 2514 reviews, 1999-03-19

35
Everybody Was So Young
by Amanda Vaill
4.2 avg rating, 140 reviews, 1999-04-20

36
I Am Malala
by Malala Yousafzai
4.6 avg rating, 4051 reviews, 2013-10-08

37
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
by Maya Angelou
4.7 avg rating, 1300 reviews, 2009-04-21

38
Into the Wild
by Jon Krakauer
4.3 avg rating, 2749 reviews, 1997-02-01

39
Just Kids
by Patti Smith
4.5 avg rating, 1264 reviews, 2010-11-02

40
Kitchen Confidential Updated Edition
by Anthony Bourdain
4.6 avg rating, 3449 reviews, 2007-01-09

41
Knock Wood
by Candice Bergen
4.3 avg rating, 103 reviews, 2014-07-01

42
Life
by Keith Richards
4.5 avg rating, 1618 reviews, 2011-05-03

43
Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela
by James Fox
4.7 avg rating, 960 reviews, 1995-10-01

44
Meditations
by Nelson Mandela
4.2 avg rating, 3593 reviews, 1997-07-11

45
Mortality
by Marcus Aurelius
4.5 avg rating, 630 reviews, 2012-09-04

46
My Life in France
by Christopher Hitchens
4.7 avg rating, 766 reviews, 2007-10-09

47
Naked
by Julia Child
4.1 avg rating, 610 reviews, 1998-06-01

48
Napoleon: A Life
by Alex Prud’homme
4.5 avg rating, 535 reviews, 2014-11-04

49
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
by David Sedaris
4.6 avg rating, 1832 reviews, 1995-04-13

50
Night
by Andrew Roberts
4.7 avg rating, 4939 reviews, 2006-01-16

51
Notes of a Native Son
by James Baldwin
4.7 avg rating, 97 reviews, 2012-11-20

52
On the Road
by Jack Kerouac
3.9 avg rating, 1470 reviews, 1999-06-01

53
Open: An Autobiography
by Andre Agassi
4.7 avg rating, 1921 reviews, 2010-08-10

54
Out of Africa: and Shadows on the Grass
by Isak Dinesen
4.3 avg rating, 151 reviews, 1989-10-23

55
Personal History
by Katharine Graham
4.4 avg rating, 327 reviews, 1998-02-24

56
Running with Scissors: A Memoir
by Augusten Burroughs
3.6 avg rating, 1338 reviews, 2003-06-01

57
Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay
by Nancy Milford
4.1 avg rating, 147 reviews, 2002-09-10

58
Seabiscuit: An American Legend
by Laura Hillenbrand
4.8 avg rating, 1449 reviews, 2002-03-26

59
Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher
by Timothy Egan
4.6 avg rating, 636 reviews, 2013-08-06

60
Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited
by Vladimir Nabokov
4.2 avg rating, 134 reviews, 1989-08-28

61
Steve Jobs
by Walter Isaacson
4.4 avg rating, 6715 reviews, 2011-10-24

62
Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!
by Richard P. Feynman
4.6 avg rating, 1378 reviews, 1997-04-17

63
Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh
by Ralph Leighton
4.4 avg rating, 167 reviews, 2014-09-22

64
The Agony and the Ecstasy
by John Lahr
4.6 avg rating, 307 reviews, 1987-03-03

65
The Andy Warhol Diaries
by Irving Stone
4.4 avg rating, 106 reviews, 2014-12-02

66
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
by Andy Warhol
3.2 avg rating, 103 reviews, 1990-03-17

67
The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley
by Pat Hackett
4.7 avg rating, 1357 reviews, 1987-10-12

68
The Basketball Diaries
by Gertrude Stein
4.3 avg rating, 77 reviews, 1987-07-07

69
The Bell Jar
by Malcolm X
4.3 avg rating, 1472 reviews, 2005-08-02

70
The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother
by Alex Haley
4.6 avg rating, 1353 reviews, 2006-02-07

71
The Complete Maus
by Art Spiegelman
4.7 avg rating, 1290 reviews, 1996-11-19

72
The Complete Persepolis
by Marjane Satrapi
4.5 avg rating, 1121 reviews, 2007-10-30

73
The Diary of Anais Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934
by Anais Nin
4.4 avg rating, 68 reviews, 1969-03-19

74
The Diary of Frida Kahlo: An Intimate Self-Portrait
by Carlos Fuentes
4.6 avg rating, 176 reviews, 2005-08-09

75
The Glass Castle: A Memoir
by Jeannette Walls
4.6 avg rating, 7819 reviews, 2006-01-17

76
The Gulag Archipelago Abridged
by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
4.6 avg rating, 440 reviews, 2007-08-07

77
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
by Rebecca Skloot
4.6 avg rating, 14832 reviews, 2011-03-08

78
The Kid Stays in the Picture: A Notorious Life
by Robert Evans
4.1 avg rating, 237 reviews, 2013-06-04

79
The Last Lone Inventor
by Evan I. Schwartz
4.5 avg rating, 49 reviews, 2003-05-13

80
The Liars’ Club: A Memoir
by Mary Karr
4 avg rating, 543 reviews, 2005-05-31

81
The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey
by Ernesto Che Guevara
4 avg rating, 180 reviews, 2003-08-01

82
The Professor and the Madmanonary
by Cintio Vitier
4.3 avg rating, 879 reviews, 2005-07-05

83
The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt
by Aleida Guevara
4.6 avg rating, 801 reviews, 2001-11-20

84
The Soul of A New Machine
by Simon Winchester
4.5 avg rating, 184 reviews, 2000-06-01

85
The Story of My Life
by Edmund Morris
4.5 avg rating, 819 reviews, 1996-09-18

86
The Tender Bar: A Memoir
by Tracy Kidder
4.5 avg rating, 578 reviews, 2006-08-01

87
The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts
by Helen Keller
4 avg rating, 238 reviews, 1989-04-23

88
The Year of Magical Thinking
by J. R. Moehringer
4.2 avg rating, 1291 reviews, 2007-02-13

89
The Years of Lyndon Johnsonsage of Power
by Maxine Hong Kingston
4.5 avg rating, 19 reviews, 2013-04-09

90
This Boy’s Life: A Memoir
by Joan Didion
4.3 avg rating, 281 reviews, 2000-03-01

91
Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.
by Ron Chernow
4.6 avg rating, 550 reviews, 2004-03-30

92
Touching the Void
by Joe Simpson
4.6 avg rating, 435 reviews, 2004-02-03

93
Travels with Charley in Search of America
by John Steinbeck
4.5 avg rating, 1018 reviews, 1980-01-31

94
Unbroken
by Laura Hillenbrand
4.8 avg rating, 27876 reviews, 2014-07-29

95
Under the Tuscan Sun: At Home in Italy
by Frances Mayes
3.9 avg rating, 631 reviews, 1997-09-02

96
Updike
by Adam Begley
4.2 avg rating, 146 reviews, 2014-04-08

97
West with the Night: A Memoir
by Beryl Markham
4.6 avg rating, 1435 reviews, 2013-01-22

98
Vera
by Stacy Schiff
3.2 avg rating, 75 reviews, 2000-04-04

99
Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China
by Jung Chang
4.5 avg rating, 1206 reviews, 2003-08-12

100
Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
by Cheryl Strayed
4.4 avg rating, 13990 reviews, 2013-03-26