Memoirs

Out of Egypt by André Aciman

This richly colored memoir chronicles the exploits of a flamboyant Jewish family, from its bold arrival in cosmopolitan Alexandria to its defeated exodus three generations later. Aciman introduces us to the marvelous eccentrics who shaped his life - Uncle Vili, the strutting daredevil, soldier, salesman, and spy; the two grandmothers, the Princess and the Saint, who gossip in six...

Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt

The memoir consists of various anecdotes and stories of McCourt's impoverished childhood and early adulthood in Brooklyn, New York and Limerick, Ireland, as well as McCourt's struggles with poverty, his father's drinking issues, and his mother's attempts to keep the family alive.

Unfinished Business by John Houseman

For over half a century, Houseman played a commanding role on the American cultural scene. Nobody in the business has been a major part of so much of it. Almost every significant talent and personality collaborated with Houseman in the theater, Hollywood, radio and television.

The Liars' Club by Mary Karr

Karr's comic childhood in an east Texas oil town brings us darkly hilarious characters - a hard-drinking daddy, a sister who can talk down the sheriff at twelve, and an oft-married mother whose accumulated secrets threaten to destroy them all.

Exiles by Michael J. Arlen

The story of two glamorous people - one, a beautiful aristocrat; the other, a self-made man, one of the most famous authors of the 1920s. Arlen evokes his parents' seemingly charmed life in Hollywood and New York, his own childhood spent between homes and boarding schools, and the decline of a family full of love, joy, and pride in one another: in other words, a family as ordinary as...

Act One by Moss Hart

Eloquently chronicles Hart's impoverished childhood in the Bronx and Brooklyn and his long, determined struggle to his first theatrical Broadway success, Once in a Lifetime.

A Drinking Life by Pete Hamill

20 years after his last drink Hamill looks back on his early life. As a child during the depression and World War II he learnt that drinking was to be an essential part of being a man, it was only later he discovered its ability to destroy lives.

Growing Up by Russell Baker

The saddest, funniest, most tragical yet comical picture of coming of age in the U.S.A. in the Depresson years and World War II that has ever been written.

Fierce Attachments by Vivian Gornick

Born and raised in the Bronx, the daughter of "urban peasants," Gornick grows up in a household dominated by her intelligent but uneducated mother's romantic depression over the early death of her husband. Next door lives Nettie, an attractive widow whose calculating sensuality appeals greatly to Vivian. These women with their opposing models of femininity continue, well into...

Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov

Covers his life from 1903 until his emigration to America in 1940. The first twelve chapters describe Nabokov's remembrance of his youth in an aristocratic family living in pre-revolutionary Saint Petersburg and at their country estate Vyra, near Siverskaya. The three remaining chapters recall his years at Cambridge and as part of the Russian émigré community in Berlin and Paris.