Best Memoir Books

Therapist Lori Gottlieb writes about going to therapy herself after a painful breakup, interweaving her own journey as a patient with the stories of four clients she is treating simultaneously.

Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman's collection of outrageous, funny, and illuminating adventures — from cracking safes at Los Alamos to learning to draw, playing bongo drums, and embarrassing the censors of the Brazilian physics curriculum.

The former co-owner of Eleven Madison Park recounts how an obsessive commitment to making guests feel seen and celebrated transformed a failing restaurant into the best in the world.

Barack Obama's presidential memoir covers his early life, 2008 campaign, and first term, examining both the machinery of American democracy and the personal cost of holding its highest office.

Written as a letter to his teenage son, Ta-Nehisi Coates examines the history and present reality of anti-Black racism in America — its origins in the destruction of Black bodies, its persistence through white supremacy — with unsparing intellectual force.

The Japanese Breakfast musician writes about her Korean-American identity, her mother's death from cancer, and how food became the medium for grief and memory.

Barack Obama's searingly honest memoir about race, identity, and his search for belonging across three continents.

Patti Smith's memoir of her friendship and love with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in New York City from 1967 to his death from AIDS in 1989, written as a promise to a dying friend.

David Goggins continues his life story beyond Can't Hurt Me, exploring how he pushed further into the darkest corners of his mind to unlock the next level of human potential.

Chip and Joanna Gaines tell the story behind Fixer Upper and the Magnolia empire — how they met, took risks, weathered setbacks, and built a life and a business together in Waco, Texas.

Sportswriter Mitch Albom reconnects with his dying professor Morrie Schwartz for a series of life lessons delivered in the shadow of death.

Matthew McConaughey's memoir drawn from 35 years of diary entries — a personal philosophy built from the experiences, mistakes, and epiphanies of an unconventional life.

Michael Lewis's memoir of his years as a bond salesman at Salomon Brothers in the 1980s, capturing the greed and absurdity of Wall Street's most explosive decade.

Esther Greenwood, a brilliant college student in 1950s New York, descends into mental illness and attempted suicide in Sylvia Plath's semi-autobiographical masterpiece.

Jeannette Walls recounts her extraordinary childhood, raised by brilliant but dysfunctional nomadic parents who flouted convention and neglected their children's basic needs.

Joan Didion's unflinching account of the year following her husband John Gregory Dunne's sudden death while their daughter lay critically ill in the hospital.

Roxane Gay writes about her body — fat, surveilled, weaponized against her — and the sexual violence that shaped her relationship with it, with unflinching honesty and structural precision.

The founder of Bridgewater Associates shares the operating principles that guided his life and built one of the world's most successful hedge funds.

Michelle Obama shares the tools and practices that helped her navigate uncertainty — from knitting and mentorship to the value of friendship and the art of staying in your own lane.

Glennon Doyle recounts how falling in love with soccer player Abby Wambach led her to question every choice she had made and learn to trust her own inner knowing.

Matthew Perry chronicles his rise to fame on Friends and his decades-long battle with alcohol and opioid addiction in a memoir marked by self-lacerating honesty.

A collective autobiography of twentieth-century France, told through the pronoun 'one' rather than 'I,' assembling a life from photographs, memories, and the shared experience of an entire generation.

After the collapse of her marriage and her mother's death, Cheryl Strayed impulsively hiked 1,100 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail alone — unprepared, grieving, and ultimately transformed.

Will Smith's memoir traces his journey from West Philadelphia to global superstardom while exploring the fears, failures, and family dynamics that shaped him.