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Life Stories and Memoirs

Sort: Author  Date  Format  Price  Title


Exam Copy
All Over but the Shoutin'

Written by Rick Bragg


Format: Trade Paperback, 352 pages
On Sale: September 8, 1998
Price: $14.95
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 978-0-679-77402-0 (0-679-77402-5)

This moving recollection of a life on the American margin is the story of Rick Bragg, who grew up dirt-poor in northeastern Alabama, seemingly destined for either the cotton mills or the penitentiary, and instead became a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The New York Times. It is the story of Bragg's... Read more >

Exam Copy
The Boy Who Fell Out of the Sky
A True Story
Written by Ken Dornstein


Format: Trade Paperback, 352 pages
On Sale: June 12, 2007
Price: $13.95
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 978-0-375-70769-8 (0-375-70769-7)

David Dornstein was twenty-five years old, with dreams of becoming a great writer, when he boarded Pan Am Flight 103 on December 21, 1988. Thirty-eight minutes after takeoff, a terrorist bomb ripped the plane apart over Lockerbie, Scotland. Almost a decade later, Ken Dornstein set out to solve the riddle of... Read more >
Also available as an eBook.

Exam Copy
Crashing Through
A True Story of Risk, Adventure, and the Man Who Dared to See
Written by Robert Kurson


Format: Hardcover, 320 pages
On Sale: May 15, 2007
Price: $25.95
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6335-2 (1-4000-6335-3)

In his critically acclaimed bestseller Shadow Divers, Robert Kurson explored the depths of history, friendship, and compulsion. Now he returns with another thrilling adventure–the stunning true story of one man’s heroic odyssey from blindness into sight.

Mike May spent his life crashing through. Blinded at age three, he defied expectations by breaking... Read more >
Also available as an abridged audio CD, audiobook download, eBook, trade paperback and in large print.

Exam Copy
God Grew Tired Of Us
A Memoir
Written by John Bul Dau and Michael Sweeney


Format: Hardcover, 304 pages
On Sale: January 16, 2007
Price: $26.00
Publisher: National Geographic
ISBN: 978-1-4262-0114-1 (1-4262-0114-1)

This unforgettable book is the first-person account of a miracle—indeed, a whole series of miracles. A tale of suffering, tragedy, and sorrow redeemed by indomitable resolve and a stubborn refusal to despair, it's set in a Sudan shadowed by unrelenting war and ruthless violence, yet illuminated by faith, generosity, and steadfast... Read more >

Exam Copy
The Good Good Pig
The Extraordinary Life of Christopher Hogwood
Written by Sy Montgomery


Format: Trade Paperback, 272 pages
On Sale: April 17, 2007
Price: $13.95
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 978-0-345-49609-6 (0-345-49609-4)

“Christopher Hogwood came home on my lap in a shoebox. He was a creature who would prove in many ways to be more human than I am.”
–from The Good Good Pig

A naturalist who spent months at a time living on her own among wild creatures in remote jungles, Sy Montgomery had... Read more >
Also available as an eBook.

Exam Copy
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Written by Dave Eggers


Format: Trade Paperback, 496 pages
On Sale: February 13, 2001
Price: $14.95
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 978-0-375-72578-4 (0-375-72578-4)

"A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is, finally, a fine book of jest, which is why it succeeds so brilliantly. Eggers' most powerful prose is often his most straightforward, relying on old-fashioned truth telling for its punch." —The New York Times Book Review

The literary sensation of the year, a book that... Read more >

Exam Copy
Honky

Written by Dalton Conley


Format: Trade Paperback, 224 pages
On Sale: September 18, 2001
Price: $12.95
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 978-0-375-72775-7 (0-375-72775-2)

As recalled in Honky, Dalton Conley’s childhood has all of the classic elements of growing up in America. But the fact that he was one of the few white boys in a mostly black and Puerto Rican neighborhood on Manhattan’s Lower East Side makes Dalton’s childhood unique.

At the age of three... Read more >

Exam Copy
A Hope in the Unseen
An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League
Written by Ron Suskind


Format: Trade Paperback, 400 pages
On Sale: May 4, 1999
Price: $15.95
Publisher: Broadway
ISBN: 978-0-7679-0126-0 (0-7679-0126-6)

Ron Suskind tells the story of Cedric Jennings, an African- American teenager who is ferociously determined to study his way out of the inner city and get his piece of the American dream. Suskind follows Jennings from his early years in high school through his first year at Brown University.

Suskind... Read more >

Exam Copy
The Innocent Man

Written by John Grisham


Format: Trade Paperback, 400 pages
On Sale: November 20, 2007
Price: $16.00
Publisher: Delta
ISBN: 978-0-385-34091-5 (0-385-34091-5)

In 1982, a 21-year-old waitress in Ada, Oklahoma was raped and murdered. For five years the police could not solve the crime. They wound up charging former local baseball star Ron Williamson and his friend Dennis Fritz with capital murder. Despite the fact that the prosecution’s case was built on junk... Read more >
Also available as an abridged audio CD, abridged audio CD, unabridged audio CD, audiobook download, audiobook download, hardcover, paperback and in large print.

Exam Copy
Into the Wild (MTI)

Written by Jon Krakauer


Format: Trade Paperback, 224 pages
On Sale: August 21, 2007
Price: $13.95
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 978-0-307-38717-2 (0-307-38717-8)

Jon Krakauer tells the haunting true story of Chris McCandless, who after graduating from college in 1991, walked deep into the widerness of Alaska on a fatal odyssey. Krakauer explores the ideas of spiritual want, the fear of intimacy, and rejection of privilege. Students gain bold insights into the Zeitgeist of... Read more >

Exam Copy
The Laramie Project

Written by Moises Kaufman


Format: Trade Paperback, 128 pages
On Sale: September 11, 2001
Price: $12.95
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 978-0-375-72719-1 (0-375-72719-1)

For a year and a half following the murder of Matthew Shepard, Moisés Kaufman and his Tectonic Theater Project–whose previous play, Gross Indecency, was hailed as a work of unsurpassed originality–conducted hundreds of interviews with the citizens of Laramie, Wyoming, to create this portrait of a town struggling with a horrific... Read more >

Exam Copy
Look Me in the Eye
My Life with Asperger's
Written by John Elder Robison


Format: Hardcover, 304 pages
On Sale: September 25, 2007
Price: $25.95
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 978-0-307-39598-6 (0-307-39598-7)

Ever since he was small, John Robison had longed to connect with other people, but by the time he was a teenager, his odd habits—an inclination to blurt out non sequiturs, avoid eye contact, dismantle radios, and dig five-foot holes (and stick his younger brother in them)—had earned him the label... Read more >
Also available as an abridged audio CD, audiobook download, eBook and a trade paperback.

Exam Copy
Made in Detroit

Written by Paul Clemens


Format: Trade Paperback, 256 pages
On Sale: October 10, 2006
Price: $13.95
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 978-1-4000-7596-6 (1-4000-7596-3)

A New York Times Notable Book

A powerfully candid memoir about growing up white in Detroit and the conflicted point of view it produced.

Raised in Detroit during the ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s, Paul Clemens saw his family growing steadily isolated from its surroundings: white in a predominately black city, Catholic in an... Read more >
Also available as an eBook.

Exam Copy
Miracle in the Andes
72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home
Written by Nando Parrado and Vince Rause


Format: Trade Paperback, 304 pages
On Sale: May 15, 2007
Price: $13.95
Publisher: Three Rivers Press
ISBN: 978-1-4000-9769-2 (1-4000-9769-X)

In the first hours there was nothing, no fear or sadness, just a black and perfect silence.

Nando Parrado was unconscious for three days before he woke to discover that the plane carrying his rugby team, as well as their family members and supporters, to an exhibition game in Chile had crashed... Read more >
Also available as an abridged audio CD, audiobook download and an eBook.

Exam Copy
Mountains Beyond Mountains
The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World
Written by Tracy Kidder


Format: Trade Paperback, 336 pages
On Sale: August 31, 2004
Price: $15.95
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN: 978-0-8129-7301-3 (0-8129-7301-1)

ALA Notable Book
A New York Times Notable book

This paperback edition includes a Reading Group Guide.


Tracy Kidder is a winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the author of the bestsellers The Soul of a New Machine, House, Among Schoolchildren, and Home Town. He has been described by the Baltimore Sun as the... Read more >
Also available as an abridged audio CD, audiobook download, eBook and a hardcover.

Exam Copy
Stuart: A Life Backwards

Written by Alexander Masters


Format: Trade Paperback, 320 pages
On Sale: May 29, 2007
Price: $12.00
Publisher: Delta
ISBN: 978-0-385-34088-5 (0-385-34088-5)

In this extraordinary book, Alexander Masters has created a moving portrait of a troubled man, an unlikely friendship, and a desperate world few ever see. A gripping who-done-it journey back in time, it begins with Masters meeting a drunken Stuart lying on a sidewalk in Cambridge, England, and leads through layers... Read more >
Also available as an eBook.

Exam Copy
Thinking in Pictures, Expanded Edition: My Life with Autism

Written by Temple Grandin


Format: Trade Paperback, 304 pages
On Sale: January 10, 2006
Price: $13.95
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 978-0-307-27565-3 (0-307-27565-5)

The captivating subject of Oliver Sack's Anthropologist on Mars, here is Temple Grandin's personal account of living with autism and how the extraordinary gift of animal empathy has transformed her world and ours.

Temple Grandin is renowned throughout the world as a designer of livestock holding equipment. Her unique empathy for animals... Read more >

Exam Copy
What I Know for Sure
My Story of Growing Up in America
Written by Tavis Smiley


Format: Trade Paperback, 272 pages
On Sale: January 8, 2008
Price: $13.95
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 978-0-385-72172-1 (0-385-72172-2)

Tavis Smiley grew up in a family of thirteen in rural Indiana, where money was scarce and the sight of other black faces even scarcer. Always an outsider because of his race, economic background, and Pentecostal religious beliefs, he was sustained by his family’s love. But one day his world was... Read more >
Also available as a hardcover and in large print.

Exam Copy
The Year of Magical Thinking

Written by Joan Didion


Format: Trade Paperback, 240 pages
On Sale: February 13, 2007
Price: $13.95
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 978-1-4000-7843-1 (1-4000-7843-1)

From one of America’s iconic writers, a stunning book of electric honesty and passion. Joan Didion explores an intensely personal yet universal experience: a portrait of a marriage—and a life, in good times and bad—that will speak to anyone who has ever loved a husband or wife or child.

“Thrilling . ... Read more >
Also available as an eBook, hardcover and in large print.