memoir

Paul Kalanithi - a Stanford neurosurgical resident in his sixth and final year of training, with a Stanford BA in English literature and human biology, a Stanford MA in English, a Cambridge master's in history and philosophy of science and medicine, and a Yale medical degree - was diagnosed in May 2013 with stage IV non-small-cell EGFR-positive lung cancer at thirty-six; his daughter Cady was born on July 4, 2014; he died on March 9, 2015, at thirty-seven, with Cady eight months old; the memoir he had been writing in the time he had left was published posthumously in January 2016 with a foreword by Abraham Verghese and an epilogue by his wife Lucy covering the last weeks of his life, spent sixty-eight weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, and was a 2017 Pulitzer Prize finalist for Biography.

Russian-Kazakhstani guide Anatoli Boukreev's firsthand account of the 1996 Everest disaster - co-written with G. Weston DeWalt, published the same year as Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air, and offering the Mountain Madness team's perspective on the storm that killed eight climbers and the three trips into it that Boukreev made alone to bring three of his clients back alive.

A memoir of growing up in a remote Kentucky holler in 1980s Appalachia, surviving an alcoholic, drug-dealing father, falling into her own cycles of abuse, and finding a path out through Berea College and graduate school.

Amy Schumer delivers brutally honest essays about relationships, body image, and growing up, combining her signature humor with surprising vulnerability and insight into modern womanhood.

A deeply personal memoir about one woman's year-long shopping ban and her journey toward mindful consumption and intentional living.