Abuse, Addiction,
Trauma & Recovery
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Fierce Attachments by Vivian Gornick (1987)
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A Child Called "It": One Child's Courage to Survive by Dave Pelzer (1995)
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The Liar's Club by Mary Karr (1995)
Drinking: A Love Story by Caroline Knapp (1996)
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I Am The Central Park Jogger: A Story of Hope and Possibility by Trisha Meili (2003)
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The Glass Castle: A Memoir by Jeannette Walls (2005)
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The Night of the Gun: A Reporter Investigates the Darkest Story of His Life--His Own by David Carr (2008)
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Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson (2011)
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The Skin Above My Knee by Marcia Butler (2017)
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Estranged: Leaving Family and Finding Home by Jessica Berger Gross (2017)
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The Choice: Embrace the Possible by Dr. Edith Eva Eger (2017)
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Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover (2018)
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Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing: A Memoir by Matthew Perry (2022)
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Adventure & Survival
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Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain
(1883)
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Seven Years in Tibet: My Life Before, During and After by Heinrich Harrer (1952)
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My Family and Other Animals (Corfu Trilogy #1) by Gerald Durrell (1956)
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Travels With Charlie: In Search of America by John Steinbeck (1962)
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Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors by Piers Paul Read (1974)
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Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster by Jon Krakauer (1997)
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Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi (2003)
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Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert (2006)
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African American/Black Experiences
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Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave by Frederick Douglass (1845)
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Black Boy by Richard Wright (1945)
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Manchild in the Promised Land by Claude Brown (1965)
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Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance by Barack Obama (1995)
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Coming of Age/Growing Up
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Stop-Time by Frank Conroy (1967)
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I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou (1969)
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The Road from Coorain by Jill Ker Conway (1989)
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This Boy's Life: A Memoir by Tobias Wolff (1989)
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The Liar's Club: A Memoir by Mary Karr (1995)
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All Souls: A Family Story from Southie by Michael Patrick MacDonald (1999)
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Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt (1996)
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Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel (2006)
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Just Kids by Patti Smith (2010)
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Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl by Carrie Brownstein (2015)
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Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by
J. D. Vance (2016)
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My Life in Boats, Fast and Slow by Andrew Larkin (2018)
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Hey, Kiddo: How I Lost My Mother, Found My Father, and Dealt with Family Addiction by Jarrett J. Krosoczka (2018)
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Where The Light Fell: A Memoir by Philip Yancey (2021)
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Funny People
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My Gorgeous Life: The Life, the Loves, the Legend by Dame Edna Everage (1989)
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Dave Barry Turns 40 by Dave Barry (1991)
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I Feel Bad About My Neck: And
Other Thoughts On Being a Woman by Nora Ephron (2006)
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Kiss Me Like a Stranger: My Search for Love and Art by Gene Wilder (2010)
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Bossypants by Tina Fey (2011)
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Hollywood & Theater
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Gypsy: A Memoir by Gypsy Rose Lee (1957)
Timebends: A Life by Arthur Miller (1987)
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Marilyn and Me: Sisters, Rivals, Friends by Susan Strasberg (1992)
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Ghost Light: A Memoir by Frank Rich (2000)
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In Pieces by Sally Field (2018)
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Too Much Is Not Enough: A Memoir of Fumbling Toward Adulthood by Andrew Rannells (2019)
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My Name is Barbra by Barbra Streisand (2023)
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Sonny Boy by Al Pacino (2025)
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The House of Hidden Meanings: A Memoir by RuPaul (2024)
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Impairments
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The Story of My Life by Helen Keller (1903)
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Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy (1994)
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The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby (1997)
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Lightning Flowers: My Journey to Uncover the Cost of Saving a Life by Katherine E. Standefer (2020)
Incarceration
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Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison by Piper Kerman (2010)
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Prisoner: My 544 Days in an Iranian Prison—Solitary Confinement, a Sham Trial, High-Stakes Diplomacy, and the Extraordinary Efforts It Took to Get Me Out by Jason Rezaian (2019)
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Kitchens and Restaurants
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The Gastronomical Me by M.F.K. Fisher (1943)
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Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table by Ruth Reichel (1998)
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Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly by Anthony Bourdain (2000)
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Love and/or Marriage
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The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion (2005)
About Alice by Calvin Trillin (2011)
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New York, New York
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My New York by Mabel Osgood Wright (1926)
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Royal and/or Wealthy
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Spare by Prince Harry (2023)
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Spiritual Transformation
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Confessions by St. Augustine (400 A.D.)
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The Seven Story Mountain by Thomas Merton (1948)
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The Long Loneliness by Dorothy Day (1952)
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The Late Liz by Elizabeth Burns (pseudonym for Gert Behanna) (1957)
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A Severe Mercy: A Story of Faith, Tragedy and Triumph by Sheldon Vanauken (1977)
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Lovesong: Becoming a Jew by Julius Lester (1988)
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Telling Secrets: A Memoir by Frederick Buechner (1991)
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From Harvard to Hell and Back! by Eric H. Sigward (2001)
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The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness by Karen Armstrong (2004)
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Dancing Through It: My Journey in the Ballet by Jenifer Ringer (2014)
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Whistleblowers
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Permanent Record by Edward Snowden (2019)
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Work
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Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America by Barbara Ehrenreich (2011)
The Long Haul: A Trucker's Tales of Life on the Road by Finn Murphy (2018)
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Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive by Stephanie Land (2019)
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WW2 and/or Nazi Holocaust
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Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl (1946 in Germany; 1959 in the U.S.)
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Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank (1947)
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Night by Elie Wiesel (1960)
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Through the Valley of The Kwai: From Death-camp Despair to Spiritual Triumph by Ernest Gordon (1962)
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Inside the Third Reich: Memoirs by Albert Speer (1970)
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The Hiding Place: The Triumphant True Story by Corrie ten Boom (1971)
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An Interrupted Life: The Diaries of Etty Hillesum 1941-1943 (1984)
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Maus: A Survivor's Tale by Art Spiegelman (1991)
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The Choice: Embrace the Possible by Dr. Edith Eva Eger (2017)
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Writers
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Les Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1782)
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Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell (1933)
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Life with Father by Clarence Day (1935)
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Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov (1947)
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Bird By Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott (1994)
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The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother by James McBride (1995)
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All Over But the Shoutin' by Rick Bragg (1997)
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On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King (2000)
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The Tender Bar: A Memoir by J.R. Moehringer (2006)
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Somewhere Towards the End: A Memoir by Diana Athill (2009)
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Crazy Brave: A Memoir by Joy Harjo (2012)
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The Light of the World by Elizabeth Alexander (2015)
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Heartland: A Daughter of the Working Class Reconciles an American Divide by Sarah Smarsh (2018)
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Where The Light Fell: A Memoir by Philip Yancey (2021)
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