Biography & Memoir

Mann has published pictures that show her young children naked, her husband's muscular dystrophy and dead bodies decomposing. She reflects on her life and work in a new memoir called Hold Still.

Baseball's Mike Matheny speaks with Fresh Air's Dave Davies about his playing career, managing in the big leagues and the pressures of youth sports. Matheny is the author of The Matheny Manifesto.

My Struggle is about Karl Ove Knausgaard's wrangle with his father, with death, with his muse and so on. The 46-year-old Norwegian's pointedly unliterary book has become a literary sensation.

"Your heart is pounding; your adrenaline is shooting out of your ears," Steve Osborne says. "And you got one second to get it right." He retired from the force in 2003. His memoir is called The Job.

When Lucy Knisley agreed to go on a Caribbean cruise with her grandparents, she didn't know she'd spend 10 days basically keeping them alive. She writes about it in her new cartoon memoir.

For the composer, life is how the past and the future connect. Glass' new memoir, Words Without Music, looks back on his childhood, travels through Asia and when his music provoked violence.

Bruce Eric Kaplan's illustrated memoir I Was A Child describes his life in Maplewood, N.J., in the '60s and '70s. He says it's a way of keeping his parents alive, "not just for me, but for the world."

Sante Fe's most famous ghost is Hannah Nordhaus' great-great-grandmother. Her new book, American Ghost, is mix of memoir, cultural history, genealogical detective story and paranormal investigation.

In his new memoir, Frank describes how early in politics he feared people would "draw inferences" if he supported gay rights. But his drive to fight discrimination was stronger.

In Abigail Thomas' What Comes Next and How to Like It, the aging process robs the 70-something of beauty and energy. In H Is for Hawk, Helen Macdonald trains a goshawk after her father dies.

Gordon co-founded Sonic Youth with Thurston Moore. When their marriage broke up in 2011, so did the band. Gordon talks about rebuilding her life, writing her memoir and her new band Body/Head.

Offutt's late father went from running a small insurance agency to writing more than 400 books, mostly pornography. The writer tells Fresh Air his dad believed he would be "extremely famous" for it.

In his new memoir, Philip Connors writes about "living in the shadow of suicide." Wracked by guilt and haunted by what-ifs, Connors investigated his brother's death and learned a terrible secret.

Daisy Hay's new book is a joint biography of 19th century British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli and his wife, Mary Anne, whose fortune and status as a gentile helped boost her husband's career.

Scott Saul's new book, Becoming Richard Pryor, describes how Pryor went from being raised by a grandmother, who was a bootlegger and madam, to being a transformative figure in entertainment.

Woodson won the National Book Award for young people's literature for her memoir Brown Girl Dreaming. She says that growing up in South Carolina, she knew that the safest place was with her family.

Fresh Air rock critic Ken Tucker says that one of the best books he's ever read about punk rock is a new memoir by Viv Albertine.

McLagan, who died at 69, helped define the sound of '60s British rock with his bands Small Faces and Faces. He toured with the Rolling Stones, Dylan and Billy Bragg. He appeared on Fresh Air in 2004.

Fresh Air jazz critic Kevin Whitehead reviews three jazz books out this holiday season—a singer's biography, a pianist's autobiography, and a fat coffee table book. Whitehead says they're all worth a look, though he has a couple of quibbles — and also a confession.