100 biographies to read in your lifetime
<p class="p1"><img style="float:right;" src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/54e382b569bedd4011c66d19-1200-900/woman-reading-on-bed-with-a-dog.jpg" border="0" alt="woman reading on bed with a dog">
Whether they provide a glimpse into the past or capture the life of a contemporary icon, biographies and memoirs let us walk in someone else's shoes.
<p class="p1">The Amazon Books editors compiled a list of the 100 biographies and memoires that everyone should read in their lifetime.<span style="line-height: 1.5em;">
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<p class="p1">A few of the titles are admittedly novels (or "<span>authors shrouding their experiences within the cloak of fiction," as the Amazon editors put it) while others are classic biographies</span>, but all of the books are essential reading on some of the world's most famous politicians, comedians, musicians, chefs, freedom fighters, and artists.
<p class="p4"><span class="s1">From the autobiographies of Malala Yousafzai and Barak Obama to the storied lives of historical titans like Winston Churchill and </span><span class="s2">Frederick Douglass, keep scrolling to see the 100 biographies you should add to your reading list.</span>
<ol>
<li>
"A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" by Dave Eggers
</li>
<li>
"A Long Way Gone" by Ishmael Beah
</li>
<li>
"A Moveable Feast" by Ernest Hemingway
</li>
<li>
"A Walk in the Woods" by Bill Bryson
</li>
<li>
"American Caesar" by William Manchester
</li>
<li>
"American Lion" by Jon Meacham
</li>
<li>
"American Prometheus" by Kai Bird
</li>
<li>
"American Sniper" by Chris Kyle
</li>
<li>
"American Sphinx" by Joseph J. Ellis
</li>
<li>
"Angela's Ashes" by Frank McCourt
</li>
<li>
"Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl" by Anne Frank
</li>
<li>
"Autobiography of a Face" by Lucy Grealy
</li>
<li>
"Autobiography of Mark Twain" by Mark Twain
</li>
<li>
"Ball Four" by Jim Bouton
</li>
<li>
"Black Boy" by Richard Wright
</li>
<li>
"Black Like Me" by John Howard Griffin
</li>
<li>
"Born Standing Up" by Steve Martin
</li>
<li>
"Born to Run" by Christopher McDougall
</li>
<li>
"Bossypants" by Tina Fey
</li>
<li>
"Cash" by Johnny Cash
</li>
<li>
"Catherine the Great" by Robert K. Massie
</li>
<li>
"Chronicles" by Bob Dylan
</li>
<li>
"Churchill: A Life" by Martin Gilbert
</li>
<li>
"Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice" by Phillip Hoose
</li>
<li>
"Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness" by William Styron
</li>
<li>
"De Profundis and Other Prison Writings" by Oscar Wilde
</li>
<li>
"Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight" by Alexandra Fuller
</li>
<li>
"Dorothy Parker" by Marion Meade
</li>
<li>
"Dreams from My Father" by Barack Obama
</li>
<li>
"Drinking: A Love Story" by Caroline Knapp
</li>
<li>
"Dust Tracks on a Road" by Zora Neale Hurston
</li>
<li>
"E=mc~2" by David Bodanis
</li>
<li>
"Eat, Pray, Love" by Elizabeth Gilbert
</li>
<li>
"Endurance" by Alfred Lansing
</li>
<li>
"Everybody Was So Young" by Amanda Vaill
</li>
<li>
"Helen Keller: The Story of My Life" by Helen Keller
</li>
<li>
"I Am Malala" by Malala Yousafzai
</li>
<li>
"I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" by Maya Angelou
</li>
<li>
"Into the Wild" by Jon Krakauer
</li>
<li>
"Just Kids" by Patti Smith
</li>
<li>
"Kitchen Confidential" by Anthony Bourdain
</li>
<li>
"Knock Wood" by Candice Bergen
</li>
<li>
"Life" by Keith Richards
</li>
<li>
"Long Walk to Freedom" by Nelson Mandela
</li>
<li>
"Meditations" by Marcus Aurelius
</li>
<li>
"Mortality" by Christopher Hitchens
</li>
<li>
"My Life in France" by Julia Child
</li>
<li>
"Naked" by David Sedaris
</li>
<li>
"Napoleon" by Andrew Roberts
</li>
<li>
"Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass" by Frederick Douglass
</li>
<li>
"Night" by Elie Wiesel
</li>
<li>
"Notes of a Native Son" by James Baldwin
</li>
<li>
"On the Road" by Jack Kerouac
</li>
<li>
"Open" by Andre Agassi
</li>
<li>
"Out of Africa" by Isak Dinesen
</li>
<li>
"Personal History" by Katharine Graham
</li>
<li>
"Robert A. Caro's The Years of Lyndon Johnson" by Robert A. Caro
</li>
<li>
"Running with Scissors" by Augusten Burroughs
</li>
<li>
"Savage Beauty" by Nancy Milford
</li>
<li>
"Seabiscuit: An American Legend" by Laura Hillenbrand
</li>
<li>
"Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher" by Timothy Egan
</li>
<li>
"Speak, Memory" by Vladimir Nabokov
</li>
<li>
"Steve Jobs" by Walter Isaacson
</li>
<li>
"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" by Richard P. Feynman
</li>
<li>
"Tennessee Williams" by John Lahr
</li>
<li>
"The Agony and the Ecstasy" by Irving Stone
</li>
<li>
"The Andy Warhol Diaries" by Andy Warhol
</li>
<li>
"The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas" by Gertrude Stein
</li>
<li>
"The Autobiography of Malcolm X" by Malcolm X
</li>
<li>
"The Basketball Diaries" by Jim Carroll
</li>
<li>
"The Bell Jar" by Sylvia Plath
</li>
<li>
"The Color of Water" by James McBride
</li>
<li>
"The Complete Maus" by Art Spiegelman
</li>
<li>
"The Complete Persepolis" by Marjane Satrapi
</li>
<li>
"The Diary of Anais Nin" by Anais Nin
</li>
<li>
"The Diary of Frida Kahlo" by Carlos Fuentes
</li>
<li>
"The Glass Castle" by Jeannette Walls
</li>
<li>
"The Gulag Archipelago" by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
</li>
<li>
"The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot
</li>
<li>
"The Kid Stays in the Picture" by Robert Evans
</li>
<li>
"The Last Lone Inventor" by Evan I. Schwartz
</li>
<li>
"The Liars' Club" by Mary Karr
</li>
<li>
"The Motorcycle Diaries" by Ernesto Che Guevara
</li>
<li>
"The Professor and the Madman" by Simon Winchester
</li>
<li>
"The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt" by Edmund Morris
</li>
<li>
"The Soul of A New Machine" by Tracy Kidder
</li>
<li>
"The Tender Bar" by J. R. Moehringer
</li>
<li>
"The Woman Warrior" by Maxine Hong Kingston
</li>
<li>
"The Year of Magical Thinking" by Joan Didion
</li>
<li>
"This Boy's Life" by Tobias Wolff
</li>
<li>
"Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr." by Ron Chernow
</li>
<li>
"Touching the Void" by Joe Simpson
</li>
<li>
"Travels with Charley in Search of America" by John Steinbeck
</li>
<li>
"Unbroken" by Laura Hillenbrand
</li>
<li>
"Under the Tuscan Sun" by Frances Mayes
</li>
<li>
"Updike" by Adam Begley
</li>
<li>
"Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov)" by Stacy Schiff
</li>
<li>
"West with the Night" by Beryl Markham
</li>
<li>
"Wild Swans" by Jung Chang
</li>
<li>
"Wild" by Cheryl Strayed
</li>
</ol>
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<b>See Also:</b>
<ul><li>100 Mysteries Everyone Should Read In Their Lifetime</li><li>100 Children's Books Everyone Should Read In Their Lifetime</li><li>100 Books Everyone Should Read Before They Die</li></ul>
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