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1. Three Cups of Tea One Man's Mission to Fight Terrorism And Build Nations One School at a Time

Greg Mortenson recounts his experiences as co-founder of the Central Asia Institute, a nongovernmental organization that, since the 1990s, has done exemplary work in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where it has built and operated schools and improved public health. He tells how, by working side-by-side, the villagers and the staff of the CAI have overcome challenges, drawn on strengths, and worked toward breaking down the ignorance and prejudice that might otherwise have divided them. It has not been easy and the need is great, says Mortenson, and underscores the fact that the positive work of NGOs like the Central Asia Institute can go far in fighting terrorism.

2. Dreams from My Father A Story of Race and Inheritance

by Barack Obama

When Barack Obama learns of the death of his African father, whom he hardly knew, he is compelled to trace his unusual family history. Obama, who became a nationally known figure in 2004 when he gave the keynote address at the Democratic Convention, writes movingly about being raised in Hawaii by his white mother. He goes on to describe his years at Harvard (where he was the first black president of the Harvard Law Review), his illuminating visit to family members in Kenya, and his work as a community activist in Chicago, where he eventually entered Illinois politics. While the book ends there, the rest is history. On January 20, 2009, Barack Obama was inaugurated as President of the United States of America.

3. Big Russ and Me Father and Son Lessons of Life

by Tim Russert

Journalist Tim Russert looks back at his childhood in Buffalo, NY, in the 1950s. Raised a Catholic by parents who taught him a combination of moral values and common sense, Russert grew up in a world with marked differences from today's, and he describes it with affection, eloquence, and humor. In particular, he concentrates on his father, Tim, Sr., who came home from World War II to drive a truck and raise a family, and who has been a source of inspiration and wisdom to his son all his life--a relationship Russert has tried to establish with his own son.

4. Eat, Pray, Love One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia

by Elizabeth Gilbert

Emotionally wrung-out from her divorce, the painful ending of a subsequent love affair, and a general, long-standing feeling of malaise, novelist and journalist Elizabeth Gilbert decides to recharge herself through a year's worth of travel, believing that her return to happiness could be found through exploring both physical gratification and spiritual peace and then determining an appropriate balance between the two. She pursues the first part of her program (eating, drinking, and talking) in Italy, the second in India (joining an ashram), and the third in Bali (studying with a medicine man).

5. John Adams

by David Willis McCullough

This biography of the second President of the United States is by the esteemed historian whose biography TRUMAN won a Pulitzer Prize. McCullough tells of Adams's life as a farmer and lawyer, his relationship with his beloved Abigail, and the role he played in the turbulent events which led to the founding of a nation. He explores his relationships with the other Founding Fathers, especially the important differences with his rival, Thomas Jefferson. A New York Times Editors' Choice selection for 2001.

6. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

by Dave Eggers

Undoubtedly one of the most inventive and unorthodox memoirs ever written, A HEARTBREAKING WORK OF STAGGERING GENIUS became an instant bestseller, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and made Dave Eggers's name as a brilliant, risk-taking young writer. Orphaned in college when his parents both died of cancer in the span of 32 days, Eggers and his kid brother Toph moved to San Francisco and set up a delightfully unorthodox life together, a mix of carefree adolescence and the unexpected responsibilities of adulthood. In between enrolling Toph in school, finding a home, juggling various romances, and auditioning for THE REAL WORLD, Eggers founded MIGHT, an independent magazine featuring a potent blend of commentary, cynicism, and comedy--the same raucous style that would fuel his memoir. Though AHWOSG turns the memoir genre on its head and teems with self-mockery and postmodern trickery, beneath the cleverness it is a remarkable story of youthful hope and zeal, a story that became an instant classic for the youth generation at the dawn of the 21st century.

7. Maus a Survivors Tale My Father Bleeds History

by Art Spiegelman

MAUS, the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel and illustrated biography by Art Spiegelman, is widely considered to have vaulted the graphic novel to new heights in terms of literary quality, artistic merit, and personal and historical complexity. Using anthropomorphic animal characters (Jews are depicted as mice, Germans as cats, Americans as dogs, etc.) and a combination of flashbacks, memories, and stories, Spiegelman recounts the experiences of his father Vladek Spiegelman before, during, and after World War II, including his harrowing years in concentration camps. The first volume, MY FATHER BLEEDS HISTORY, establishes Spiegelman's father in the present as an irritable old man with a bad heart living in Queens, New York, and then deftly moves back in time to shows his youthful romances and eventual marriage to the beautiful Anja. Their happiness, however, is short-lived: they are forced to relocate into the Jewish ghetto while worse dangers loom as the Nazis' Final Solution grinds into action. The use of cartoons to describe such appalling events seems problematic, but MAUS brilliantly captures not only the awful weight of history, but also humorous and humane moments from a dark time in human civilization.

8. Persepolis

by Marjane Satrapi

The critics made the inevitable comparisons to MAUS when reviewing this graphic novel-style memoir. But this deeply personal child's-eye view of Iran during the fall of the Shah deserves to be considered in its own right. Marjane Satrapi is related both to the old Persian royal family and to Communist rebels. Therefore, it's not surprising that she was raised a sheltered child of privilege and educated to be independent-minded. Unfortunately, the unpleasant realities of life in '70s and '80s Iran--violent demonstrations, imprisonment and executions of relatives and family friends, bombings by Iraq--continually keep intruding into that sheltered life. And neither the repressive regime of the Shah nor the even more repressive fundamentalist Islamic regime that follows is a good place for an independent mind to speak out. Despite Marjane's deep love for and loyalty to her country, does she truly belong there anymore? The black-and-white illustrations, reminiscent of woodcuts, manage to be both childlike and sophisticated and work intimately with the text to provide both a physical and emotional landscape.

9. On Writing A Memoir of the Craft

by Stephen King

In this combination memoir and writing guide, best-selling author Stephen King tells of how he came to be a writer and, in the process, explores many aspects of writing, from plot construction through some of the nuts and bolts of getting a book published. Much of his advice is quite traditional: find a quiet place to work, concentrate on character, master grammar and punctuation, keep THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE handy. And, like all good writers, he stresses the primary importance of reading, and in an amusing reconstruction of his childhood and teenage years, he writes about his obsession with books (among other things). The section in which he relates his brush with death after being hit by a drunken driver is especially compelling--very much like a Stephen King novel.

10. The Glass Castle

by Jeannette Walls

Jeannette Walls's memoir revolves around her parents, who give the concept of bad parenting a whole new meaning. Her irresponsible romantic of a father was an inventor of outlandishly useless devices, and her mother, an artist, was his abettor. As the two of them dragged the family around the country on the run from creditors and from one bad idea to another, they virtually ignored their four hapless children, except when they were giving them shoplifting lessons or stealing their money for booze. Walls writes about these years with a hardheaded, clear-eyed acceptance and very little recrimination, and she doesn't neglect her parents' virtues, which she manages to wrest out of the slag heap: their values were both generous and idealistic, they produced self-reliant children, and they were true originals.

11. Night

by Elie Wiesel

First published in 1958, this raw, devastatingly haunting Holocaust memoir is Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel's best known work. After the German army invades, they first confine the Jewish community of Sighet, Transylvania, into a ghetto, and then pack them into cattle cars bound for the concentration camps. Fifteen-year-old Eliezer and his father, alone after the Nazis take away his mother and sisters, experience unbearable horrors at Birkenau, Auschwitz, and Buchenwald that undermine Elie's faith in God and come close to destroying his humanity. This new translation, which hews more closely to the original Yiddish text than previous editions, was chosen for Oprah's Book Club in 2006.

12. Marley & Me Life and Love with the World's Worst Dog

by John Grogan

Marley is a hyperactive, intractable, mischievous, and entirely lovable yellow Lab, acquired by John Grogan and his wife because they thought having a dog would prepare them for parenthood. Not only did Marley take over their lives, but when children did eventually come along, Marley retained his place as firstborn and supremely difficult child. Grogan's very amusing chronicle of Marley's life and adventures is a first-rate memoir of a memorable pet.

13. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

by John Perkins

John Perkins writes of his experiences in a job that few people are aware exists: economists whose primary function is to persuade developing countries to take on enormous loans so that they can hire American companies, thus diverting vast sums of money back into the U.S. When these countries have trouble repaying, the American government steps in and dictates terms, essentially hijacking the economy of the place. Perkins's view of the domination of the global economy by the U.S. and of the greed and power plays this involves, is a controversial one that his former employers attempted to suppress for many years. Perkins claims that this "confession" could pave the way for reform but that, if nothing else, it has eased his conscience.

14. The Year of Magical Thinking

by Joan Didion

In THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING, Joan Didion writes an account of her life since the 2003 death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne. Didion's grief was profound and debilitating; she and Dunne had been married for nearly 40 years, during which they were hardly ever apart. But in the course of her mourning period, she also gained crucial insights into herself, her marriage, death, and loss. Winner of the 2005 National Book Award for Nonfiction and named one of the 10 Best Books of 2005 by the New York Times.

15. Running With Scissors

by Augusten Burroughs

When his dysfunctional family sent Augusten Burroughs away to be raised in the home of his mother's therapist, he became part of an even more dysfunctional and unusual family dynamic. In this bestseller, which has become a classic of the wackier side of memoir literature, Burroughs doesn't flinch at any grotesquerie or atrocity, recording it all--no matter how bizarre--with relish and with a delightfully twisted sense of humor.

16. Black Boy

by Richard Wright

Published in 1945, this autobiography--the story of Wright's Southern childhood, up to the time when he left Memphis for Chicago--is considered by many critics to be his most important work.

17. His Bright Light The Story of Nick Traina

by Danielle Steel

Danielle Steel relates the moving story of her son Nick's battle with depression and how it claimed the young man's promising life.

18. A Man Named Dave A Story of Triumph and Forgiveness

by Dave Pelzer

This is the third book in David Pelzer's touching autobiographical trilogy about surviving an abusive childhood.

19. The Lost Boy A Foster Child's Search for the Love of a Family

by Dave Pelzer

The sequel to Pelzer's autobiography of an abusive childhood, THE LOST BOY follows Pelzer through the California foster care system.

20. Leap of Faith Memoirs of an Unexpected Life

by Queen Noor

The Arab-American Lisa Halaby married King Hussein in 1978, becoming Queen Noor of Jordan. In this memoir, she writes candidly about her life as the wife of a king, with insights into the politics of the Middle East as well as details of her humanitarian activism, her children's upbringing, and the sad death of her husband in 1999.