Read on-- life stories : reading lists for every taste

Scores of appeal-based reading lists cover topics you'll never find in the library catalog--from extraordinary women and overcoming adversity to sports talk, spiritual journeys, and luminous prose.

With the genre of memoirs filled with so many titles and from such a variety of authors, it is hard to grasp what's available and what's worth reading. For all those who love delving into the lives of others, this Read On... volume offers help.

Read On...Life Stories: Reading Lists for Every Taste offers brief descriptions of nearly 450 published memoirs, from classics like The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin , to recent bestsellers like John Grogan's Marley and Me and Julie Andrews' Home . Titles are grouped together by their appeal to readers, and there is something for everyone: humorous memoirs, thrilling adventure stories, chatty celebrity reminiscences, cathartic dramas of family dysfunction, fascinating career retrospectives, and insightful stories of family and personal lives in many eras and places.

• Series Foreword p. vii
• Introduction p. ix
• Chapter 1 Character p. 1
• Beating the Odds: Survivors of Awful Childhoods p. 2
• Behind the Scenes: Celebrities' Lives p. 4
• Being Different: Introspective Memoirs p. 6
• Breaking Free: Overcoming Adversity p. 9
• Caught in the Crossfire: People in Danger p. 11
• Crossing Borders: Making a Life in a New Country p. 13
• Extraordinary Women's Lives p. 16
• Fathers and Sons p. 18
• Fractured Families: From Adversity to Insight p. 20
• Identity Papers: Discovering Our True Selves p. 23
• Insiders: People Who Made History p. 25
• Marching to Their Own Drum: Unique Individuals p. 27
• Mothers and Daughters, Mothers and Sons p. 29
• Passage to Adulthood: Coming-of-Age Memoirs p. 31
• Then There Were Two: Love and Marriage p. 34
• Who Goes There? Struggling with Mental Illness p. 36
• Chapter Two Story p. 39
• Crooked Lives: People Behaving Badly p. 40
• Dishing: Stories from the Kitchen p. 42
• Faultlines: Difficult Family Relationships p. 45
• Four Seasons: Memoirs of One Year p. 47
• In Harm's Way: Lives at Risk p. 49
• Living to Tell the Tale: Near-Death Experiences p. 51
• Moments of Truth: Stories of Turning Points p. 53
• Off the Beaten Path: Unusual Adventures p. 56
• Pet Projects: The Animals in Our Lives p. 59
• Relativity: Unusual Family Experiences p. 61
• Rooting Around: Searching for Family Origins p. 63
• Sports Talk p. 65
• Under Fire: Stories of War p. 67
• Chapter Three Setting p. 71
• Eureka! Scientists at Work p. 72
• Far Out: Travel to Unusual Places p. 74
• Foreign Exchange: Encountering Other Cultures p. 76
• A Hard Day's Night: Life in the Music Business p. 80
• Life Support: Memoirs from the Medical World p. 82
• Orient Express: Travel to the Far East and Oceania p. 84
• Outside the Box: Interesting Occupations p. 86
• The Passing Scene: Road Trips p. 89
• Primal Scenes: Vivid Childhood Memoirs p. 91
• Small Is Beautiful: Life in Rural America p. 94
• Under African Skies p. 95
• Chapter Four Language p. 99
• The Definite Article: Writers on Their Lives p. 100
• Depth of Field: Insightful Writers p. 102
• Full Disclosure: Writing from the Heart p. 104
• The Great Outdoors: Communing with Nature p. 106
• Loud and Clear: Unique Voices p. 108
• Luminous Prose: Elegant Memoirs p. 110
• Private Worlds: Diaries p. 112
• Short and Sweet: Under 200 Pages p. 114
• Chapter Five Mood p. 117
• A Backward Glance: Nostalgic Memoirs p. 117
• Growing Up Absurd: Unusual Childhoods p. 120
• Laugh Lines: Memoirs on the Lighter Side p. 122
• Renewal: Life-Altering Experiences p. 124
• Taking It On Faith: Spiritual Journeys p. 127
• The Ties that Bind: Bittersweet Family Stories p. 129
• Undertow: Edgy, Dark Memoirs p. 132
• Index p. 135