Best biographies 2024

Our picks for the best biographies and memoirs of the year

Al Woodworth | November 21, 2022

This is our #1 pick for the Best Biography and Memoir of 2022, and our #2 pick overall. Zamora’s story—of his nine-year-old self making the dangerous trek from El Salvador to California with a pack of strangers and a “coyote” to lead the way—immediately captured our team’s attention. It’s impossible not to read this book and find your throat prick with dryness, your eyes water with tears, your stomach drop in understanding of just how far parents will go to offer the ones they love a better shot at life. This memoir is harrowing and unforgettable. —Al Woodworth, Amazon Editor

Jennette McCurdy earned legions of young fans as the star of Nickelodeon hits like iCarly and Sam & Cat. Behind the scenes though, her own childhood was far from anything she portrayed on TV. Her domineering mother introduced her to anorexia at age 11 to keep her from developing, hoping it would earn her more roles. Jennette was also forced to shower with her mother and brother well into her teens. Jennette’s mom is so overbearing, she flies into a rage when Jennette dares to have something as simple as her own favorite color, or, after she’s become a successful actor, her own apartment. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. It’s no wonder Jennette became known in Hollywood as the “Cirque du Soleil performer of crying on cue.” This book, with a title that’s hard to forget, will keep you simultaneously horrified and enthralled until you’ve devoured the entire thing in one sitting. —Lindsay Powers, Amazon Editor

The Escape Artist opens with one of the most riveting chapters you will read any time soon. Two young men are attempting to escape from Auschwitz as Nazi soldiers search for them, and come narrowly close to finding them. Rudolph Vrba was a brilliant young man who became one of only four people to escape Auschwitz. But that is just the beginning of the story. He set back for his native Slovakia; then he set out to warn the world of the atrocities he had witnessed. The author Jonathan Freedland deserves mention here, because he takes a fascinating story about an important if forgotten man in history—and he keeps the story from becoming one dimensional. Vrba was indeed a hero, but much of his effort to warn the world fell on deaf ears. And Vrba was himself a man of contradictions. I enjoyed this book immensely. And I was moved by it. I would not be surprised if it becomes a best seller. —Chris Schluep, Amazon Editor     

Rob Delaney is known for his laugh-out-loud performance on Catastrophe, but this memoir isn’t about that. It’s about the death of his third child, Henry. It’s about the fourteen months, that “gorgeous” baby Henry spent in the hospital for a brain tumor. There is anger and unthinkable hurt that Delaney expresses—and of course his trademark wit—but also the unabashed wonder and joy of being in love with his baby boy and being a parent. This is one of the best memoirs of the year and belongs on the shelf with Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking (which Delaney references throughout). —Al Woodworth, Amazon Editor

We live in a divided country, and so it makes sense to examine the man who was president when the nation suffered an actual schism. Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian Jon Meacham approaches Lincoln through his education and evolution as a thinker, setting those experiences in parallel with the practical work of politics, grounded by the reality that Lincoln, like all of us, was an imperfect human being. What emerges is a man who very early developed principles and a moral center that would guide him through the highs and lows of his political and personal journey. If one is to take away a message from this highly readable, deeply researched book, it’s that fallible people can achieve great things when they are guided by clear ideals. This book belongs in the upper echelon of Lincoln biographies. —Chris Schluep, Amazon Editor     

Named one of the 25 greatest actors of the 21st century, Viola Davis is the first Black actress to win the “triple crown of acting:” an Oscar for her role in Fences, two Tony Awards, and an Emmy for her lead role in How to Get Away With Murder. And here’s our recommendation on this book: read it if you are a fan. Read it if you aren’t. Either way, you’ll be changed by Davis’ candor about the poverty and abuse she endured as a child in Rhode Island, discovering acting (with her sister), entering the world of Hollywood, and the transformation of finding herself. This memoir will take your breath away—and I mean that in the best sense. We loved this memoir, which is why we put it on our Best of the Year list. —Al Woodworth, Amazon Editor

Many of us are familiar with the term PTSD, but Stephanie Foo’s powerful debut sheds light on the scourge of complex PTSD—trauma that is experienced repeatedly over an extended period of time. As a survivor of unimaginable physical and emotional abuse at the hands of her parents (seriously, the matriarch of the family makes Mommy Dearest look like June Cleaver), this is something Foo was painfully familiar with. That’s why it’s all the more remarkable that she was, is—sans blueprint!—able to summon the fortitude to not only mitigate the impact of the profound emotional damage inflicted on her, but thrive despite it. It’s an ongoing battle Foo fights on multiple fronts, and What My Bones Know outlines the various treatments she tries in service of her goal: if not to slay what she refers to as her inner “beast,” at least have control over it…the most compelling thing about What My Bones Know, and the thing that makes it a story that will inspire anyone who reads it, is that it’s a reminder of the extraordinary resilience of the human spirit. —Erin Kodicek, Amazon Editor

I chose this book as my personal pick back in April—because it’s a true story, it reads like a thriller, and there might not have been a more timely or compelling narrative being told then. You may have heard of Vladimir Putin. The author Bill Browder—in going after the murderers of his Russian lawyer as his company was caught up in a Russian money laundering scheme—truly put his life on the line and encountered some very dangerous people who all led back to Putin himself. This is a fascinating real-life tale with a direct connection to the world events playing out today. —Chris Schluep, Amazon Editor