Books like Leaving Dirty Jersey by James Salant

After being murdered at fourteen, Susie Salmon watches from heaven as her family, friends, and killer grapple with grief and justice, revealing how love and forgiveness shape a family's future.

Jeannette Walls' memoir chronicles her turbulent childhood in a dysfunctional, itinerant family, detailing poverty, alcoholism, and homelessness across the United States as she seeks stability and personal growth.

Dave Eggers' 2000 memoir chronicles his struggles and resilience after the cancer-related deaths of his parents, as he assumes responsibility for his younger brother and confronts the challenges of growing up alone.

Patti Smith’s memoir charts her life in New York City, from the bohemian scenes of Max’s Kansas City and the Hotel Chelsea to a creative partnership with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in Brooklyn.

Frank McCourt's memoir recounts a harsh childhood in Depression‑era Brooklyn and Limerick, where poverty, a neglectful father, and a mother named Angela shape his survival through storytelling.

A memoir of a woman who overcomes a strict survivalist Mormon upbringing in rural Idaho to pursue higher education, ultimately earning a PhD in history at Cambridge.

Augusten Burroughs recounts his turbulent adolescence spent in a decaying Victorian home run by a psychiatrist, where ordinary rites of childhood give way to a surreal blend of family eccentricity, escape from school, and the early years of a future author.

The Ice Man chronicles the life of Richard ‘The Iceman’ Kuklinski, a New Jersey family man who was also a prolific mob assassin whose career spanned thirty years and continents, and who claimed to have killed over two hundred men.

This compelling, honest book investigates the growing epidemic of prescription painkiller abuse among today’s Generation Rx. Through gripping profiles and heartbreaking confessions, this memoir dares to uncover the reality—the addiction, the withdrawal, and the recovery—of this newest generation of pill poppers.Joshua Lyon was no stranger to substance abuse. By the time he was seventeen, he had already found sanctuary in pot, cocaine, Ecstasy, and mushrooms—just to name a few. Ten years later, on assignment for Jane magazine, he found himself with a two-inch-thick bottle of Vicodin in his hands and only one decision to make: dispose of the bottle or give in to his curiosity. He chose the latter. In a matter of weeks he’d found his perfect drug.In the early half of this decade, purchasing painkillers without a doctor was as easy as going online and checking the spam filter in your inbox. The accessibility of these drugs—paired with a false perception of their safety—contributed to their epidemic-like spread throughout America’s twenty-something youth, a group dubbed Generation Rx. Pill Head is Joshua Lyon’s harrowing and bold account of this generation, and it’s also a memoir about his own struggle to recover from his addiction to painkillers. The story of so many who have shared this experience—from discovery to addiction to rehabilitation—Pill Head follows the lives of several young people much like Joshua and dares to blow open the cultural phenomena of America’s newest pill-popping generation.Marrying the journalist’s eye with the addict’s mind, Joshua takes readers through the shocking and often painful profiles of recreational users and suffering addicts as they fight to recover. Pill Head is not only a memoir of descent, but of endurance and of determination. Ultimately, it is a story of encouragement for anyone who is wrestling to overcome addiction, and anyone who is looking for the strength to heal.

Eric Konigsberg’s gripping family history unfolds the lurid rise of his notorious ‘Uncle Heshy,’ the legendary Mafia enforcer who spent decades on the run.