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	Shanghai Diary: A Young Girl’s Journey from Hitler’s Hate to War-Torn China by Ursula Bacon	The author’s Jewish family spent the World War II years in a Shanghai ghetto.
	The Big Year: A Tale of Man, Nature, and Fowl Obsession by Mark Obmascik	The story of three fanatic birders trying to win the North American Big Year, an annual competition among bird watchers to sight the greatest number of species. For 365 days the three men fly off to exotic locations all over the world to add species sightings to their personal lists. The competition goes right down to the wire.
	All Over But the Shoutin' by Rick Bragg	Journalist Rick Bragg's memoir about growing up poor in rural Alabama.

Memoirs
Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, A Young Man, and Life’s Greatest Lesson	by Mitch Albom	Highlights of the regular visits a former student paid to his favorite professor while the old man was dying, and what he learned from his mentor.
Life and Death in Shanghai	by Nien Cheng	The author, the well-educated and cosmopolitan widow of a manager of Shell Petroleum in China, was targeted by the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution and kept in solitary confinement. She lost everything.
Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China	by Jung Chang	The story of three generations of women in a 20th century Chinese family. The author’s grandmother was a warlord’s concubine with bound feet. Her mother became a Communist party functionary but was later denounced in the Cultural Revolution. The author worked devotedly for Mao until she grew disillusioned and left the country.
Road from Coorain	by Jill Ker Conway	At age 11 the author left her isolated life on the family's sheep farm in the Australian outback for school in wartime Sydney. She eventually became president of Smith College and then a professor at MIT.
Boy: Tales of Childhood	by Roald Dahl	Classified as a juvenile or young adult book, this is a very entertaining collection of memories about boarding school and holiday travels from the author’s childhood.
Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood	by Alexandra Fuller	The author grew up on a farm in present-day Zimbabwe during the Rhodesian civil war.
I Dreamed of Africa	by Kuki Gallmann	A fascinating story of an Italian woman who realized her dream of living on a beautiful ranch in Kenya, but also experienced many personal losses.
West with the Night	by Beryl Markham	Beryl Markham writes of her adventures as a bush pilot in Africa in the 1930s.
Kaffir Boy: The True Story of a Black Youth’s Coming of Age in Apartheid South Africa	by Mark Mathabane	Mark Mathabane’s family lived in an illegal shanty outside Johannesburg and experienced many of the indignities and horrors of apartheid. But Mark’s mother believed in education and he worked hard and eventually escaped. His story is very inspiring.
The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother	by James McBride	The author’s mother is a remarkable woman. The daughter of a Polish rabbi, she left her family to marry a black man, started a church with him, and raised 12 children.
Makes Me Wanna Holler: A Young Black Man in America	by Nathan McCall	The author grew up in a tough neighborhood in Virginia, participated in violent crimes, went to prison for armed robbery, and then worked to become a successful journalist.
Angela’s Ashes: A Memoir	by Frank McCourt	The author writes vividly of his “miserable Irish Catholic childhood” in Limerick.
Leap of Faith: Memoirs of an Unexpected Life	by Queen Noor	Queen Noor was born Lisa Halaby in the United States, went to Princeton, and met and married King Hussein of Jordan when she was 26.
Adventure
The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea	by Sebastian Junger	A ship called the Andrea Gail met the “storm of the century” in October 1991.
Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster	by Jon Krakauer	An eyewitness account of tragedy during the 1996 climbing season when a party of six people was trapped by a storm near the summit.
The Orchid Thief	by Susan Orlean	Some orchid enthusiasts are obsessed, as the reader learns in this tale of explorers, smugglers, big-spenders, and other characters driven by the passion to see or possess rare species.
Alive! The Story of the Andes Survivors	by Piers Paul Reed	Forty-five members of an Uruguayan rugby team survived a plane crash in the Andes mountains in 1972, but only sixteen made it out almost 80 days later.
History
Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West	by Stephen E. Ambrose	Lewis and Clark’s journey brought vividly to life.
Mimi and Toutou’s Big Adventure: The Bizarre Battle of Lake Tanganyika	by Giles Foden	The true story that inspired The African Queen. During World War I an eccentric British officer and his crew took two gunboats, Mimi and Toutou, up the Congo River hoping to take control of Lake Tanganyika from the Germans.
Seabiscuit: An American Legend	by Laura Hillenbrand	Seabiscuit didn't look like a classic racehorse. He was owned by a car dealer who thought the day of the horse was over, trained by an eccentric loner, and ridden by a hard-luck jockey. But he won many races and many hearts during the 1930s and 1940s.
Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith	by Jon Krakauer	The author explores the 1984 murder of a woman and child by the brothers of her husband and looks at the history of Mormon fundamentalism.
Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time	by Dava Sobel	Sailors could not calculate accurately where they were before Jim Harrison, the subject of this book, invented the chronometer.
Galileo’s Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love	by Dava Sobel	Galileo’s daughter was a Clarisse nun. This book tells both of her harsh life and of Galileo’s trial before the Inquisition. Based on letters from Clarisse to her father.
The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary	by Simon Winchester	Dr. W.C. Minor provided thousands of entries to the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary from his rooms in the Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum.
Science
The Hot Zone	by Richard Preston	The true story of an Ebola virus outbreak in a lab near Washington D.C.
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers	by Mary Roach	Bodies are put to many uses.
True Crime
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil: A Story of Savannah	by John Berendt	In telling the story of a 1981 murder in Savannah, Georgia the author evokes the beauty of the city and vividly portrays some of its eccentric residents.
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America	by Erik Larsen	The story of two men told in alternating chapters: Daniel H. Burnham, the architect responsible for construction of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, and H.H. Holmes, a serial killer masquerading as a charming doctor.
Other Countries and Cultures
In a Sunburned Country	by Bill Bryson	Accompany Bryson as he dodges jellyfish at Bondi Beach, discovers a fish that can climb trees, weathers 140-degree heat in the desert, and discovers many other wonders in Australia. Bryson’s other books are also recommended.
Geisha	by Liza Crihfield Dalby	In the mid-1970s the author, an American graduate student, apprenticed as a geisha in Kyoto.
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures	by Anne Fadiman	The story of a tragedy resulting from the clash of the two very different cultures. Lia Lee was the daughter of Hmong refugees in Merced, California. Her doctors diagnosed her seizures as the misfiring of her cerebral neurons; her parents called her illness qaug dab peg - the spirit catches you and you fall down - and ascribed it to the wandering of her soul.

Updated: 11/29/2006