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100 biographies to read in your lifetime

Feb 18, 2015, 01:30 IST

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.
The Amazon Books editors compiled a list of the 100 biographies and memoires that everyone should read in their lifetime.A few of the titles are admittedly novels (or "authors shrouding their experiences within the cloak of fiction," as the Amazon editors put it) while others are classic biographies, but all of the books are essential reading on some of the world's most famous politicians, comedians, musicians, chefs, freedom fighters, and artists.From the autobiographies of Malala Yousafzai and Barak Obama to the storied lives of historical titans like Winston Churchill and Frederick Douglass, keep scrolling to see the 100 biographies you should add to your reading list.
  1. "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" by Dave Eggers

  2. "A Long Way Gone" by Ishmael Beah

  3. "A Moveable Feast" by Ernest Hemingway

  4. "A Walk in the Woods" by Bill Bryson

  5. "American Caesar" by William Manchester

  6. "American Lion" by Jon Meacham

  7. "American Prometheus" by Kai Bird

  8. "American Sniper" by Chris Kyle

  9. "American Sphinx" by Joseph J. Ellis

  10. "Angela's Ashes" by Frank McCourt

  11. "Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl" by Anne Frank

  12. "Autobiography of a Face" by Lucy Grealy

  13. "Autobiography of Mark Twain" by Mark Twain

  14. "Ball Four" by Jim Bouton

  15. "Black Boy" by Richard Wright

  16. "Black Like Me" by John Howard Griffin

  17. "Born Standing Up" by Steve Martin

  18. "Born to Run" by Christopher McDougall

  19. "Bossypants" by Tina Fey

  20. "Cash" by Johnny Cash

  21. "Catherine the Great" by Robert K. Massie

  22. "Chronicles" by Bob Dylan

  23. "Churchill: A Life" by Martin Gilbert

  24. "Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice" by Phillip Hoose

  25. "Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness" by William Styron

  26. "De Profundis and Other Prison Writings" by Oscar Wilde

  27. "Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight" by Alexandra Fuller

  28. "Dorothy Parker" by Marion Meade

  29. "Dreams from My Father" by Barack Obama

  30. "Drinking: A Love Story" by Caroline Knapp

  31. "Dust Tracks on a Road" by Zora Neale Hurston

  32. "E=mc~2" by David Bodanis

  33. "Eat, Pray, Love" by Elizabeth Gilbert

  34. "Endurance" by Alfred Lansing

  35. "Everybody Was So Young" by Amanda Vaill

  36. "Helen Keller: The Story of My Life" by Helen Keller

  37. "I Am Malala" by Malala Yousafzai

  38. "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" by Maya Angelou

  39. "Into the Wild" by Jon Krakauer

  40. "Just Kids" by Patti Smith

  41. "Kitchen Confidential" by Anthony Bourdain

  42. "Knock Wood" by Candice Bergen

  43. "Life" by Keith Richards

  44. "Long Walk to Freedom" by Nelson Mandela

  45. "Meditations" by Marcus Aurelius

  46. "Mortality" by Christopher Hitchens

  47. "My Life in France" by Julia Child

  48. "Naked" by David Sedaris

  49. "Napoleon" by Andrew Roberts

  50. "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass" by Frederick Douglass

  51. "Night" by Elie Wiesel

  52. "Notes of a Native Son" by James Baldwin

  53. "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac

  54. "Open" by Andre Agassi

  55. "Out of Africa" by Isak Dinesen

  56. "Personal History" by Katharine Graham

  57. "Robert A. Caro's The Years of Lyndon Johnson" by Robert A. Caro

  58. "Running with Scissors" by Augusten Burroughs

  59. "Savage Beauty" by Nancy Milford

  60. "Seabiscuit: An American Legend" by Laura Hillenbrand

  61. "Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher" by Timothy Egan

  62. "Speak, Memory" by Vladimir Nabokov

  63. "Steve Jobs" by Walter Isaacson

  64. "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" by Richard P. Feynman

  65. "Tennessee Williams" by John Lahr

  66. "The Agony and the Ecstasy" by Irving Stone

  67. "The Andy Warhol Diaries" by Andy Warhol

  68. "The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas" by Gertrude Stein

  69. "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" by Malcolm X

  70. "The Basketball Diaries" by Jim Carroll

  71. "The Bell Jar" by Sylvia Plath

  72. "The Color of Water" by James McBride

  73. "The Complete Maus" by Art Spiegelman

  74. "The Complete Persepolis" by Marjane Satrapi

  75. "The Diary of Anais Nin" by Anais Nin

  76. "The Diary of Frida Kahlo" by Carlos Fuentes

  77. "The Glass Castle" by Jeannette Walls

  78. "The Gulag Archipelago" by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  79. "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot

  80. "The Kid Stays in the Picture" by Robert Evans

  81. "The Last Lone Inventor" by Evan I. Schwartz

  82. "The Liars' Club" by Mary Karr

  83. "The Motorcycle Diaries" by Ernesto Che Guevara

  84. "The Professor and the Madman" by Simon Winchester

  85. "The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt" by Edmund Morris

  86. "The Soul of A New Machine" by Tracy Kidder

  87. "The Tender Bar" by J. R. Moehringer

  88. "The Woman Warrior" by Maxine Hong Kingston

  89. "The Year of Magical Thinking" by Joan Didion

  90. "This Boy's Life" by Tobias Wolff

  91. "Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr." by Ron Chernow

  92. "Touching the Void" by Joe Simpson

  93. "Travels with Charley in Search of America" by John Steinbeck

  94. "Unbroken" by Laura Hillenbrand

  95. "Under the Tuscan Sun" by Frances Mayes

  96. "Updike" by Adam Begley

  97. "Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov)" by Stacy Schiff

  98. "West with the Night" by Beryl Markham

  99. "Wild Swans" by Jung Chang

  100. "Wild" by Cheryl Strayed

Disclosure: Jeff Bezos is an investor in Business Insider through his personal investment company Bezos Expeditions.

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