Biographies

FREDERICK DOUGLASS: A NOBLE LIFE
by David A. Adler
When, in 1879, a bust in his likeness was placed at the University of Rochester, Frederick Douglass wrote: "Incidents of this character do much amaze me. It is not, however, the height to which I have risen, but the depth from which I have come that amazes me." This biography tells the story of his ascent from slavery.

ANA'S STORY: A JOURNEY OF HOPE
by Jenna Bush
Based on her work with UNICEF in Latin America and the Caribbean, Jenna Bush has written a powerful and personal nonfiction account of a girl who fights against all odds to survive. This book also includes resources for how to give and receive help.

SIR CHARLIE: CHAPLIN, THE FUNNIEST MAN IN THE WORLD
by Sid Fleischman
One of the most compelling rags-to-riches stories of modern times, in this biography of the legendary Little Tramp, Charlie Chaplin.

ANDY WARHOL: PRINCE OF POP
by Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan
Charting the artist's rise, from poverty to wealth, from obscurity to status as a pop icon, the authors deliver an absorbing tale–one in which the American dream of fame and fortune is played out in all of its success and its excess.

THE DARK GAME: TRUE SPY STORIES
by Paul B. Janeczko
From clothesline codes to surveillance satellites and cyber espionage, Janeczko uncovers two centuries' worth of true spy stories in U.S. history.

ENGLAND'S JANE: THE STORY OF JANE AUSTEN
by Juliane Locke
Describes the life and discusses the novels of the nineteenth century British author, Jane Austen, known for her vivid portrayals of middle and upper-class English society.

FEYNMAN
by Jim Ottaviani
Richard Feynman: physicist... Nobel winner... bestselling author... safe-cracker. This substantial graphic novel biography presents the larger-than-life exploits of Nobel-winning quantum physicist, adventurer, musician, world-class raconteur, and one of the greatest minds of the twentieth century: Richard Feynman.

JOHN LENNON: ALL I WANT IS THE TRUTH
by Elizabeth Partridge
The story of one of rock's biggest legends, from his birth during a 1940 World War II air raid on Liverpool, through his turbulent childhood and teen years, to his celebrated life writing, recording, and performing with the Beatles and beyond.

21: THE STORY OF ROBERTO CLEMENTE
by Wilfred Santiago
The Story of Roberto Clemente is a human drama ofcourage, faith and dignity, inspired by the life of baseball star Roberto Clemente. No other baseball player dominated the 1960s like Roberto Clemente and no other Latin American player achieved his numbers.

MYSTERY AND TERROR: THE STORY OF EDGAR ALLAN POE
by William Schoell
Poe found time to write the horror stories and poems that left an indelible mark on American literature. Poe's life was tragic in many ways, and came to an unfortunate early end.

THE NOTORIOUS BENEDICT ARNOLD: A TRUE STORY OF ADVENTURE, HEROISM, AND BRAVERY
by Steve Sheinkin
Most people know that Benedict Arnold was America's first, most notorious traitor. Few know that he was also one of its greatest war heroes. This accessible biography introduces young readers to the real Arnold: reckless, heroic, and driven. Packed with first-person accounts, astonishing battle scenes, and surprising twists, this is a gripping and true adventure tale.

INSIDE THE CRIPS: LIFE INSIDE L.A.'S MOST NOTORIOUS GANG
by Colton Simpson with Ann Pearlman
Colton "C-Loc" Simpson was a Crip. Beginning at the age of ten in the mid-1970s, Simpson's world was defined in terms of war. By the time he quit, Simpson had risen through the ranks to become Stabilizer and, later, General. Raised by his grandmother in South Central L.A., Simpson didn't so much turn to the streets as become engulfed by them. *Recommended for older teens.

PHILIP PULLMAN
by Margaret Speaker Yuan
With the publication of The Amber Spyglass, award-winning fantasy author Philip Pullman has established himself as a mythmaker for a new generation of readers.

YEAH! YEAH! YEAH! THE BEATLES, BEATLEMANIA AND THE MUSIC THAT CHANGED THE WORLD
by Bob Spitz
It starts in the housing projects and school playgrounds of Liverpool, where four boys would discover themselves–and a new form of music called rock 'n roll. It takes us from the famous first meeting between John and Paul, to the clubs of Liverpool and Germany when George and Ringo join the band, down Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields, to America and the height of the Beatles' success–when they were still teenagers.

WWE WRESTLERS
by various authors
Profiles the lives and careers of professional wrestlers.

Memoirs and Autobiography

FUN HOME
by Alison Bechdel
Meet Alison's father, a historic preservation expert and obsessive restorer of the family's Victorian home, a third-generation funeral home director, a high school English teacher, an icily distant parent, and a closeted homosexual. Through narrative that is alternately heartbreaking and fiercely funny, we are drawn into a daughter's complex yearning for her father. And yet, apart from assigned stints dusting caskets at the family-owned "fun home," as Alison and her brothers call it, the relationship achieves its most intimate expression through the shared code of books.

CLEAN: A NEW GENERATION IN RECOVERY SPEAKS OUT
by Chris Beckman
Welcome to recovery from a young addict's perspective. Written by MTV's Chris Beckman with contributions from dozens of teens and twenty-somethings in recovery, "Clean" is part autobiography, part addiction and recovery primer and part wake-up call about what's really going on in schools, cars, malls and wherever else kids come in contact with drugs and alcohol.

I FEEL GOOD: A MEMOIR OF A LIFE OF SOUL
by James Brown
Though the legend of James Brown is well covered on the albums, on the Top Ten charts, and in the tabloids, there remains a story beyond the mere chronology of events that has yet to be told. It is the story of a man who grew up black in the segregated South of white America - and whose strength of conviction and force of will were matched only by the powerful demons he battled inside himself. From his childhood memories to his musical triumphs as he journeyed from gospel to R & B to soul - and then virtually invented funk - to his struggles with inner demons and his most recent troubles with the law, this is the story of James Brown the man, told - as no one else ever could tell it - in his own words.

KING OF THE MILD FRONTIER
by Chris Crutcher
Chris Crutcher, author of young adult novels such as Ironman and Whale Talk, as well as short stories, tells of growing up in Cascade, Idaho, and becoming a writer.

GIRLBOMB: A HALFWAY HOMELESS MEMOIR
by Janice Erlbaum
At 14, Erlbaum, a columnist for Bust magazine, became fed up with her mother's latest abusive husband and left their Brooklyn apartment. This memoir chronicles Erlbaum teenage years, rife with typical issues that were intensified and complicated by her ongoing search for a place to call home.

HEART FULL OF SOUL: AN INSPIRATIONAL MEMOIR ABOUT FINDING YOUR VOICE AND FINDING YOUR WAY
by Taylor Hicks
Taylor Hicks extracts lessons from the decades-long odyssey that led him to the "American Idol" stage and discloses the lessons he's learning still as he negotiates fame and the relaunch of his career as a singer-songwriter.

IRAQIGIRL: DIARY OF A TEENAGE GIRL IN IRAQ
by IraqiGirl
"I feel that I have been sleeping all my life and I have woken up and opened my eyes to the world. A beautiful world! But impossible to live in." These are the words of fifteen-year-old Hadiya, blogging from the city of Mosul, Iraq, to let the world know what life is really like as the military occupation of her country unfolds.

DECODED
by Jay-Z
Decoded is a book like no other: a collection of lyrics and their meanings that together tell the story of a culture, an art form, a moment in history, and one of the most provocative and successful artists of our time.

BITE OF THE MANGO
by Mariatu Kamara
As a child in a small rural village in Sierra Leone, Mariatu Kamara lived peacefully surrounded by family and friends. Rumors of rebel attacks were no more than a distant worry. But when twelve-year-old Mariatu set out for a neighboring village, she never arrived. Heavily armed rebel soldiers, many no older than children themselves, attacked and tortured Mariatu. During this brutal act of senseless violence they cut off both her hands. Stumbling through the countryside, Mariatu miraculously survived.

THE BLIND SIDE: EVOLUTION OF A GAME
by Michael Lewis
The young man at the center of this story will one day be among the most highly paid athletes in the National Football League. When we first meet him, he is one of thirteen children by a mother addicted to crack; he does not know his real name, his father, his birthday, or any of the things a child might learn in school - such as, say, how to read or write. Nor has he ever touched a football. What changes? He takes up football, and school, after a rich Evangelical Republican family plucks him from the mean streets.

DROPPING IN WITH ANDY MAC: THE LIFE OF A PRO SKATEBOARDER
by Andy Macdonald with Theresa Foy DiGeronimo, with an Introduction by Tony Hawk
This is the life story of one of today's skateboarding heroes–in his own words.

COMMITTED: A RABBLE-ROUSER'S MEMOIR
by Dan Mathews
In this inspiring, irreverent memoir by a man who really has changed the world–the incomparable public face of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)–Mathews shares his unorthodox coming-of-age and outrageous career.

LIPSTICK JIHAD: A MEMOIR OF GROWING UP IRANIAN IN AMERICA AND AMERICAN IN IRAN
by Azadeh Moaveni
Azadeh Moaveni was born in Palo Alto, California, into the lap of an Iranian diaspora community awash in nostalgia and longing for an Iran many thousands of miles away. As far back as she can remember she felt at odds with her tangled identity. She seemed to be living in two worlds. At home, she was a daughter of the Iranian exile community, serving tea, clinging to tradition, and dreaming of Tehran. Outside, she was a California girl who practiced yoga and listened to Madonna. For years, she ignored the tense stand-off between her two cultures. But college magnified the clash between Iran and America, and after graduating, she moved to Tehran as a journalist.

STEALING BUDDHA'S DINNER: A MEMOIR
by Bich Minh Nguyen
In this viscerally powerful memoir, Nguyen pens a nostalgic, candid account of growing up as a Vietnamese girl in the Midwest in the 1980s, and using popular American food–from Pringles potato chips to Toll House cookies–as a way to fit in and become a "real" American.

A CHILD CALLED "IT": AN ABUSED CHILD'S JOURNEY FROM VICTIM TO VICTOR
by David J. Pelzer
This book chronicles the unforgettable account of one of the most severe child abuse cases in California history. It is the story of Dave Pelzer, who was brutally beaten and starved by his emotionally unstable, alcoholic mother: a mother who played tortuous, unpredictable games – games that left him nearly dead. He had to learn how to play his mother's games in order to survive because she no longer considered him a son, but a slave; and no longer a boy, but an "it."

POSTER CHILD: A MEMOIR
by Emily Rapp
Emily Rapp was born with a congenital defect that required, at the age of four, that her left foot be amputated. By the time she was eight she'd had dozens of operations and her entire leg below the knee had been amputated. She had also become the smiling, always perky, indefatigable poster child for the March of Dimes, and spent much of her childhood traveling around the Midwest making appearances and giving pep talks. All the while she was learning to live with what she called "my grievous, irrevocable flaw," and the paradox that being extraordinary was the only way to be ordinary.

THREE LITTLE WORDS
by Ashley Rhodes-Courter
"Sunshine, you're my baby and I'm your only mother. You must mind the one taking care of you, but she's not your mama." Ashley Rhodes-Courter spent nine years of her life in fourteen different foster homes, living by those words. As her mother spirals out of control, Ashley is left clinging to an unpredictable, dissolving relationship, all the while getting pulled deeper and deeper into the foster care system.

MY FUNDAMENTALIST EDUCATION: A MEMOIR OF A DIVINE GIRLHOOD
by Christine Rosen
An affectionate, child's-eye journey to Rosen's home, school and small town. Set in a time and place when the Living Bible outsold The Joy of Sex, during a girlhood lived as the Lord intended, among the tropical flora and fauna of Florida, its televangelists, irascible elderly, and itinerant preachers, Christine Rosen and her sister, Cathy, uncover the not always godly but surely divine secrets of a Hallelujah-ya sisterhood.

JESUS LAND: A MEMOIR
by Julia Scheeres
Julia Scheeres stumbles across these signs along the side of a cornfield while out biking with her adopted brother, David. It's the mid-1980s, they're sixteen years old and have just moved to rural Indiana, a landscape of cottonwood trees and trailer parks-and a racism neither of them is prepared for. While Julia is white, her close relationship with David, who is black, makes them both outcasts. At home, a distant mother-more involved with her church's missionaries than with her own children-and a violent father only compound their problems. When the day comes that high-school hormones, bullying, and a deep-seated restlessness prove too much to bear, the parents send Julia and David to the Dominican Republic-to a reform school there.

TWEAK: (GROWING UP ON METHAMPHETAMINES)
by Nic Sheff
The author details his immersion in a world of hardcore drugs, revealing the mental and physical depths of addiction, and the violent relapse one summer in California that forever changed his life, leading him down the road to recovery.

WE ALL FALL DOWN: LIVING WITH ADDICTION
by Nic Sheff
Sheff writes candidly about stints at in-patient rehab facilities, devastating relapses, and hard-won realizations about what it means to be a young person living with addiction.

INSIDE OUT: PORTRAIT OF AN EATING DISORDER
by Nadia Shivack
In this book the author gives readers a harrowing look inside her battle with anorexia and bulimia through pictures and captions.

TO DANCE: A MEMOIR
by Siena Cherson Siegel
The author describes how she first decided she wanted to be a ballerina at the age of six, and how that dream carried her from her home in Puerto Rico to dance class in Boston to performing with the New York City Ballet.

NAME ALL THE ANIMALS: A MEMOIR
by Alison Smith
As children, siblings Alison and Roy Smith were so close that their mother called them by one name: Alroy. But on a cool summer morning when Alison was fifteen, she woke to learn that Roy, eighteen, was dead. This is Smith's extraordinary account of the impact of that loss - on herself, on her parents, and on a deeply religious community.

SLASH
by Slash with Anthony Bozza
A memoir by the Guns n' Roses guitarist documents his childhood as a biracial son of divorced artist parents; his relationships with such figures as David Bowie, Joni Mitchell, and Seymour Cassell, and his observations about the 1980s music scene.

BORN ON A BLUE DAY: INSIDE THE EXTRAORDINARY MIND OF AN AUSTISTIC SAVANT: A MEMOIR
by Daniel Tammet
One of the world's only 50 living autistic savants is the first to tell his compelling and inspiring life story, and explain how his incredible mind works. While Tammet's brain has amazed scientists for years, readers will be moved by this remarkable man's story.

BOXING FOR CUBA: AN IMMIGRANT'S STORY OF DESPAIR, ENDURANCE & REDEMPTION
by Guillermo Vincente Vidal
The whims of politics are at the fore of Guillermo Vincente Vidal's memoir, in which young boys become men in the shadow of revolution and personal turmoil. Vidal writes about his family's participation in events that forever altered U.S.-Cuban relations after an effort to free children from the threat of Communist rule sparked Operation Peter Pan. From chance encounters with Fidel Castro and Robert F. Kennedy to life in a dismal Catholic orphanage in Colorado, Vidal perseveres to embrace life as a proud and successful Cuban American.

THE BOY WHO INVENTED SKIING: A MEMOIR
by Swain Wolfe
In his memoir, Swain Wolfe captures a West that no longer exists - from growing up on ranches in the high country of Colorado and Montana to working underground as a miner for Anaconda Copper in Butte.

WHEN I WAS A SOLDIER: A MEMOIR
by Valérie Zenatti
Like all young Israelis, Valérie Zenatti enlisted in the national defense service on her 18th birthday, where for the next two years she endured rigorous training and harsh living conditions, ultimately participating in top-secret missions with the secret service.

Based on a true story

YUMMY
by G. Neri
A graphic novel based on the true story of Robert "Yummy" Sandifer, an eleven-year old African American gang member from Chicago who shot a young girl and was then shot by his own gang members.

HOW ANGEL PETERSON GOT HIS NAME
by Gary Paulsen
Author Gary Paulsen relates tales from his youth in a small town in northwestern Minnesota in the late 1940s and early 1950s, such as skiing behind a souped-up car and imitating daredevil Evel Knievel.

QUEEN OF WATER
by Laura Resau and María Virginia Farinango
Living in a village in Ecuador, a Quechua Indian girl is sent to work as an indentured servant for an upper class "mestizo" family.

THE TALE OF ONE BAD RAT
by Bryan Talbot
Helen Potter lived a happy life until she got lost in a nightmare of sexual abuse. Now she's on a journey, a journey which takes her through urban and rural England along the same path that another Potter, Beatrix Potter, once took. Across the decades, two lives touch, and Helen discovers that the strength of two is far greater than one.

BLANKETS
by Craig Thompson
Wrapped in the landscape of a blustery Wisconsin winter, Blankets explores the sibling rivalry of two brothers growing up in the isolated country, and the budding romance of two teens.

BIOGRAPHY LINKS