Books like Growing up in a war by Bryan Magee

A collection of linked short stories that follows a platoon of American soldiers and their experiences, thoughts, and burdens during the Vietnam War.

Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography chronicles his rise from a self‑taught youth to a celebrated printer, inventor, diplomat, and statesman, offering insight into his life and the early United States.

A memoir of sixteen months in Vietnam, detailing the life of a Marine infantry officer and the realities of war during the conflict.

John Stuart Mill, English philosopher, economist, and MP, reflects on his life, ideas, and influence on classical liberalism, social theory, and political economy.

A Holocaust survivor’s harrowing recollection of being forced to serve as a Nazi mascot, then living in exile in Australia while hiding his identity, and his adult son’s quest to uncover the truth and reclaim his heritage.

A memoir of Vietnam veteran Ron Kovic, chronicling his transformation from patriotic soldier to prominent anti‑war activist after a battlefield injury.

Tomie dePaola’s coming‑of‑age memoir follows a teenage boy in wartime America as he balances school, family loss, and daily life while the world turns into a war zone.

Miranda Seymour recalls growing up at Thrumpton Hall, the country house owned by her father George Seymour, and the complex family dynamics that shaped her life in post‑war England.

When rock and roll was transforming American culture in the 1950s and '60s, East Harlem pulsed with the sounds of mambo and merengue. Instead of Elvis and the Beatles, Marta Moreno Vega grew up worshipping Celia Cruz, Mario Bauza, and Arsenio Rodriguez. Their music could be heard on every radio in El Barrio and from the main stage at the legendary Palladium, where every weekend working-class kids dressed in their sharpest suits and highest heels and became mambo kings and queens. Spanish Harlem was a vibrant and dynamic world, but it was also a place of constant change, where the traditions of Puerto Rican parents clashed with their children's American ideals.A precocious little girl with wildly curly hair, Marta was the baby of the family and the favorite of her elderly abuela, who lived in the apartment down the hall. Abuela Luisa was the spiritual center of the family, an espiritista who smoked cigars and honored the Afro-Caribbean deities who had always protected their family. But it was Marta's brother, Chachito, who taught her the latest dance steps and called her from the pay phone at the Palladium at night so she could listen, huddled beneath the bedcovers, to the seductive rhythms of Tito Puente and his orchestra.In this luminous and lively memoir, Marta Moreno Vega calls forth the spirit of Puerto Rican New York and the music, mysticism, and traditions of a remarkable and quintessentially American childhood."Viva Marta Moreno Vega! With honesty, humor, and love, she relives her coming-of-age in Spanish Harlem--the highs and the lows--eloquently documenting how deeply rooted West African cultural traditions are in her rich Puerto Rican heritage. Marta Vega's memoir makes me want to mambo." --Susan Taylor, editorial director of Essence and author of Lessons in LivingFrom the Trade Paperback edition.

Shappi Khorsandi’s memoir chronicles her childhood as an Iranian refugee in 1980s London, blending humor with the realities of exile, cultural adjustment, and the looming threat of political persecution.

A memoir of Thomas Buergenthal’s survival of Auschwitz, the ghettos, and a labor camp as a ten‑year‑old Jewish boy, later reunited with his mother and resettled in the United States.

A harrowing true account of Lisa James’s childhood abuse by a step‑father and the complicity of her mother, detailing her struggle to escape and the lasting trauma that shaped her life.