Top 100 Biography & Autobiography Books

📘 Can't Hurt Me

David Goggins, a former Navy SEAL, Army Ranger, and Air Force tactical air controller, tells the story of turning a turbulent childhood into the life of an elite endurance athlete and motivational icon, revealing his "40% Rule" for unlocking hidden potential.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Autobiography

📘 Het Achterhuis

The diary of Anne Frank, a Jewish girl hiding with her family in Amsterdam during WWII, recorded daily life, hopes, and fears, becoming a global testament to the Holocaust.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Autobiography

📘 ... Trotzdem Ja zum Leben sagen

Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl recounts his survival in Nazi concentration camps and develops logotherapy, teaching that suffering can be transformed into meaning and a renewed purpose.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Autobiography

📘 Steve Jobs

Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs draws on more than forty interviews with the pioneer and the perspectives of family, friends, competitors, and colleagues, portraying his relentless drive, meticulous perfectionism, and profound influence on personal computing, animation, music, phones, tablets and digital publishing.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Biography

📘 A child called "it"

A harrowing memoir of David J. Pelzer’s survival through extreme abuse by his alcoholic mother in California, detailing his struggle and hope for a better future.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Autobiography

📘 Wings of Fire

A. P. J. Kalam’s inspiring journey from a humble background to becoming India’s premier defence scientist and the nation’s highest civilian award winner, detailing his groundbreaking missile programmes and role in shaping India’s technological independence.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Biography

📘 Mein Kampf

Adolf Hitler’s autobiographical account outlining the ideology, development, and objectives of the National Socialist movement, as well as his personal background.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Autobiography

📘 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Maya Angelou's autobiography, 'I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings', tells the story of her life and the challenges she faced growing up in Arkansas, including racism, abuse, and the loss of her father. The book is a powerful and moving portrayal of the African American experience during the 1930s and 1940s.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Autobiography

📘 Autobiography of a Yogi

Paramahansa Yogananda’s memoir recounts his quest for a guru, encounters with spiritual leaders and scientists, and his role in introducing yoga and meditation to the Western world.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Autobiography

📘 Elon Musk

Ashlee Vance’s biography chronicles Elon Musk’s journey from South Africa to Silicon Valley, detailing his roles at PayPal, SpaceX, Tesla, and SolarCity, and exploring his impact on technology, business, and entrepreneurship.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Biography

📘 Michelle Obama in Her Own Words

Explore Michelle Obama’s public voice through 200‑250 curated quotations, organized into 75 themes, spanning her early career as a Chicago corporate lawyer, her roles in the city government and University of Chicago, up to the 2008 presidential election.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Biography

📘 Autobiografía Malcolm X

Una autobiografía de Alex Haley sobre la vida de Malcolm X, narrada en primera persona y completada con entrevistas grabadas antes de su muerte. El libro detalla su evolución de joven problemático a líder musulmán y activista de derechos civiles.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Autobiography

📘 Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Robert M. Pirsig’s classic blends a true‑to‑life motorcycle trip with a deep meditation on self‑discovery and philosophy, exploring how we live and how we might live better.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Autobiography

📘 The Glass Castle

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.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Autobiography

📘 Man's Search for Meaning [adaptation]

xvii, 159 pages : 23 cm

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Autobiography

📘 The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks follows the story of Henrietta Lacks, a poor black tobacco farmer whose cancer cells were taken in 1951 without her consent and later became the first immortal human cell line, HeLa, driving major scientific breakthroughs while raising questions of ethics, race, and medical exploitation.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Biography

📘 Into the Wild

After graduating college, journalist Jon Krakauer traces the true story of Christopher McCandless, a young adventurer who abandoned possessions, took the name Alexander Supertramp, and ventured into Alaska’s wilderness, where he met his untimely death.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Biography

📘 Little girl lost

The book chronicles Drew Barrymore’s early rise as a child star, her battle with drug addiction during adolescence, and her ongoing fight to regain control of her life.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Autobiography

📘 Ikigai

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Biography

📘 A Long Way Gone

Ishmael Beah’s memoir chronicles his harrowing journey from a nine‑year‑old rebel fighter in Sierra Leone’s civil war to a survivor rehabilitated by UNICEF and later a storyteller traveling the United States.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Autobiography

📘 "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman"

A memoir of Nobel laureate physicist Richard P. Feynman compiled from his recollections with Ralph Leighton, blending childhood adventures, scientific discoveries, and personal anecdotes with sharp wit.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Autobiography

📘 Confessions

Garry Wills’s complete Penguin Classics translation of Augustine of Hippo’s spiritual classic, capturing the original’s philosophical depth and poetic power in clear, contemporary language.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Autobiography

📘 Autobiography

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.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Autobiography

📘 An autobiography

Gandhi's autobiography is a profound exploration of his non-violent resistance to racism and colonialism, as well as his efforts to seek purity and truth through simple living and spiritual devotion.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Autobiography

📘 Mindhunter

John E. Douglas recounts his 25‑year career in the FBI Behavioral Science Unit, detailing how psychological profiling helped him solve some of the nation’s most infamous serial killings.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Autobiography

📘 Into Thin Air

Eyewitness account of the 1996 Mount Everest tragedy, detailing the climbers’ perilous ascent, descent, and the catastrophic events that shaped the deadliest season in the mountain’s history.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Autobiography

📘 Mercury and me

Jim Hutton shares an intimate, firsthand portrait of Freddie Mercury, chronicling their friendship, Mercury’s career, and the singer’s battle with AIDS, drawn from years of close companionship.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Celebrity Biography

📘 Pimp

An autobiographical account of Iceberg Slim’s life, detailing his experiences of addiction, incarceration, and the underworld of Chicago’s slums, while reflecting on the moral complexities of survival.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Autobiography

📘 Incidents in the life of a slave girl

Harriet Jacobs' autobiographical narrative recounts her escape from slavery in North Carolina, her concealment in a hidden garret for seven years, and her eventual reunion with her children in the North.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Autobiography

📘 Going Solo

Roald Dahl’s World War II memoir, *Going Solo*, recounts his daring service as a Royal Air Force pilot, offering vivid accounts of aerial combat, encounters with the enemy, and life in wartime Britain.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Autobiography

📘 Boy

Roald Dahl’s humorous memoir of his early years, from birth through his time at an English boarding school and his first job at Royal Dutch Shell.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Autobiography

📘 When rabbit howls

Truddi Chase’s memoir recounts her therapy journey uncovering 92 distinct personalities, detailing her experiences with child sexual abuse, dissociative identity disorder, and her path to recovery.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Autobiography

📘 The Last Days of Hitler

H. R. Trevor‑Roper investigates Adolf Hitler’s final ten days, April 20‑29, 1945, in Berlin’s bunker, drawing on British intelligence, American counter‑intelligence files and German prisoners to clarify the circumstances of Hitler’s death.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Political Biography

📘 Hidden Figures

Hidden Figures tells the true story of four African‑American mathematicians—Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, and Christine Darden—who broke barriers at NASA’s Langley Research Center, proving that talent, not race or gender, powers scientific progress.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Biography

📘 Terre des hommes

Antoine de Saint‑Exupéry recounts his daring years as an airmail pilot, detailing the perils of flying across the Sahara and the Andes, the crash that left him stranded, and the relentless trek to safety.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Autobiography

📘 Black like me

John Howard Griffin’s nonfiction account of his undercover stay in the racially segregated South reveals the harsh realities of race relations and social conditions, making it a critical reading for high school and college students.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Autobiography

📘 Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass’s gripping autobiography recounts his journey from enslaved child to influential abolitionist, exposing the brutal realities of slavery and the resilience of those who endured it.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Autobiography

📘 The Warren Buffet way

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Biography

📘 The Worldly Philosophers

The Worldly Philosophers offers a clear, historically grounded overview of the major economists from Adam Smith to Karl Marx, illustrating how each contributed to our understanding of capitalist society.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Biography

📘 American Prometheus

A biography of physicist Robert J. Oppenheimer, the scientific mind behind the Manhattan Project and the atomic bomb.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Biography

📘 Madame Curie

A biography of Marie Curie, highlighting her scientific achievements in chemistry and physics, her pioneering research on radioactivity, and her legacy as a leading woman scientist.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Biography

📘 Livro do desassossego

An introspective, diary‑like work by Fernando Pessoa, published in 1982, featuring the semi‑heteronym Bernardo Soares. The English edition, translated by Margaret Jull Costa, arranges the fragments chronologically.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Autobiography

📘 Farewell to Manzanar

Experienced by a spirited Japanese‑American family and a native‑born child, this true account chronicles their struggle and survival during forced detention at Manzanar during World War II.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Autobiography

📘 The Phantom Prince

An investigative biography of Elizabeth Kendall, a woman who used a false name to conceal her true identity, detailing her life, crimes, and the ways she evaded law enforcement.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Autobiography

📘 The Game

A male author seeks to win over women through seduction techniques, but his true love is discovered when he falls in love with the lead singer of a rock band.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Autobiography

📘 Hillbilly Elegy

J.D. Vance’s memoir explores the hardships of America’s white working class through his upbringing in a Rust‑belt town, offering a detailed sociological analysis of poverty, family dynamics, and social mobility in rural Kentucky and Ohio.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Autobiography

📘 Permanent Record

Edward Snowden tells the full story of his rise as a CIA and NSA insider, the creation of the U.S. mass‑surveillance system, and his decision to expose it, revealing the motivations behind his whistleblowing.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Autobiography

📘 Principles

Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates, shares a five‑step framework that transforms personal and professional goals into a systematic, machine‑like process, enabling precise fine‑tuning for lasting success.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Biography

📘 Einstein

A biography by Walter Isaacson that traces Albert Einstein’s life, scientific breakthroughs in relativity and quantum mechanics, and his relationships with fellow physicists and friends.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Biography

📘 Black Boy

Richard Wright’s autobiographical memoir chronicles his growth from childhood to adulthood while confronting the harsh realities of segregation in the Jim Crow South.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Autobiography

📘 The night stalker

A detailed biography of serial killer John Vincent Ramirez, drawing on sixty hours of interviews with the convicted murderer and additional conversations with women seeking contact and a death‑row interview.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Biography

📘 Alexander Hamilton

Ron Chernow’s definitive biography of Alexander Hamilton traces the life of America’s founding statesman—from a Caribbean orphan to Washington’s aide, Federalist leader, first Treasury Secretary, and duelist—revealing the political and economic foundations of the modern nation.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Political Biography

📘 Kitchen Confidential

Anthony Bourdain tells the candid, behind‑the‑pan stories of his rise from dishwasher to celebrated chef, mixing culinary insight with personal anecdotes.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Celebrity Biography

📘 A father's story

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Biography

📘 Dreams from My Father

Barack Obama’s memoir traces his early life, the loss of his father, and a search for identity that shaped the future president.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Autobiography

📘 Tweak

A candid coming‑of‑age memoir about Nic Sheff’s battle with drug addiction, relapse in California, and journey toward recovery.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Autobiography

📘 The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind

A true account of William Kamkwamba, a Malawian boy who, against famine, drought and poverty, builds a working windmill from scrap to bring electricity and water to his village.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Autobiography

📘 The minds of Billy Milligan

An intimate biography that chronicles the life of Billy Milligan, a man with twenty‑four distinct personalities who became the center of a landmark legal case after being charged with multiple rapes and abductions.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Biography

📘 Rizal without the overcoat

A concise, journalistic biography that presents José Rizal as vivid and contemporary, blending analysis with personal insight.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Biography

📘 Monster

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Autobiography

📘 The art of learning

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Biography

📘 Chasing Lincoln's killer

The pursuit and capture of John Wilkes Booth is brought to life in this fast‑paced, fact‑based account of the twelve‑day manhunt that followed President Lincoln’s assassination in 1865.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Biography

📘 A Beautiful Mind

A biography of mathematician John Forbes Nash, Jr., detailing his brilliance, his 31‑year battle with schizophrenia, and his eventual remission.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Biography

📘 The Pleasure of Finding Things Out

A collection of Feynman's short works, including interviews, speeches, and lectures, showcasing his unique perspective on science and life.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Biography

📘 Me Talk Pretty One Day

David Sedaris, fresh from New York and settled in Paris, delivers a collection of sharp, funny essays – from his battle with a harsh French teacher to family quirks and cultural mishaps.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Autobiography

📘 The letters of Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolfe

The Letters of Vita Sackville‑West to Virginia Woolf compiles over 500 intimate letters spanning 1922‑1941, revealing the courtship, daily life, and literary pursuits of two of England's most celebrated women authors.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Biography

📘 Assata

Assata Shakur tells the true story of her journey from a Black Panther activist to a fugitive imprisoned on controversial charges, culminating in her escape and asylum in Cuba.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Autobiography

📘 In my own way

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Biography

📘 Think big

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Biography

📘 Greenlights

A motivational guide for movie stars, focusing on their personal growth and life lessons.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Celebrity Biography

📘 Mein Weltbild

A collection of Einstein’s essays, letters, and speeches up to 1935 that reveal his thoughts on religion, science, ethics, and the political turmoil of his time, especially concerning anti‑Semitism and the League of Nations.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Biography

📘 My Secret Life

Walter’s autobiographical memoir offers a candid glimpse of Victorian sexuality, charting his prolific amatory career through candid accounts of countless encounters during a period of strict social repression.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Autobiography

📘 Doglapan

The story of Ashneer Grover, a young boy who becomes a successful entrepreneur despite the odds of being a refugee.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Autobiography

📘 Steve Jobs

A biographical account of the life and accomplishments of Steve Jobs, the legendary computer and technology visionary who revolutionized the world with Apple and Pixar.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Celebrity Biography

📘 Hitler (Profiles in Power)

Ian Kershaw's Hitler offers an intimate and compelling biography of Adolf Hitler, focusing on his rise to power through vivid descriptions of key events and figures in Germany's history. The author's research is supported by many previously untapped sources, bringing us closer to understanding the mysterious and controversial figure that Hitler was.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Political Biography

📘 Life on the Mississippi

An engaging blend of river history, Twain’s early steamboat memories, and humorous sketches that inspired his classic "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," offering readers a lively portrait of the Mississippi and its people.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Autobiography

📘 Gifted hands

Ben Carson’s memoir chronicles his rise from inner‑city Detroit to pioneering neurosurgery, detailing landmark operations and the faith, determination, and humility that propelled him to global fame.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Autobiography

📘 Leonardo da Vinci

Walter Isaacson’s biography reveals Leonardo da Vinci as a restless genius whose notebooks and inventions connect his celebrated paintings to groundbreaking science, illustrating how curiosity, observation, and imagination forge lasting creativity.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Biography

📘 Cider with Rosie

Laurie Lee’s lyrical memoir captures his boyhood in the 1920s Cotswold village of Slad, Gloucestershire, a pastoral England on the brink of modernity, and remains a vivid portrait of rural English life.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Autobiography

📘 Confessions of an economic hit man

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man reveals how U.S. officials and corporations allegedly shaped global economics to the detriment of developing nations.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Autobiography

📘 A Mind That Found Itself

A first‑person account of a young man's descent into psychosis, his experience in mental hospitals, and his ultimate recovery, highlighting the harsh treatments and the triumph of the human spirit.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Autobiography

📘 Diana, Her True Story

Andrew Morton exposes the private life of Diana, Princess of Wales, revealing her early marriage struggles, chronic illness, and  struggle for self‑realization—drawing on new photographs and first‑hand accounts from family and friends.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Celebrity Biography

📘 Brown Girl Dreaming

Newbery Honor Book National Book Award Finalist

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Autobiography

📘 Freedom in exile

Authobiography of the Dalai Lama XIV.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Autobiography

📘 Warriors don't cry

In first‑person memoir *Warriors Don't Cry*, Melba Beals recounts the perilous 1957 integration of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, detailing mob violence, armed guard intervention, and the federal military response that turned her and eight classmates into reluctant civil‑rights warriors.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Autobiography

📘 A stolen life

Jaycee Lee Dugard narrates her 18‑year ordeal of abduction, abuse, and survival, and her eventual return to freedom in 2009.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Autobiography

📘 Brain on fire

A compelling biography of Susannah Cahalan's battle with encephalitis and the challenges of diagnosis and recovery.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Autobiography

📘 Wild Swans

Jung Chang paints a vivid portrait of China’s social conditions, tracing the lives of families and women from the 1920s through the Cultural Revolution in a personal, biographical style.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Autobiography

📘 Fifty years with the Golden Rule

James Cash Penney’s autobiographical account of his life as a Christian entrepreneur, philanthropist and founder of the J.C. Penney retail chain, reflecting on the Golden Rule.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Autobiography

📘 The Innocent Man

John Grisham’s first nonfiction book exposes a wrongful conviction that left a small‑town Oklahoma man on death row, revealing how faulty evidence and Justice System failures can turn a tragedy into a tragic misjudgment.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Biography

📘 Elvis, what happened?

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Celebrity Biography

📘 A Promised Land

Obama's presidential memoir: A personal account of history's making.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Autobiography

📘 Up from Slavery

Booker T. Washington tells his own story, from birth into slavery to becoming a powerful educator and founder of the Tuskegee Industrial Institute.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Autobiography

📘 Sybil

A true account of Sybil Dorsett, who lived with 16 distinct personalities following childhood abuse and adult blackouts, shaping one of the most cited cases in psychoanalytic history.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Biography

📘 Longitude

John Harrison’s relentless quest for a sea‑ready chronometer, the solution to the 18th‑century longitude problem, interweaves biography, science, and navigation history.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Biography

📘 The Stranger Beside Me

Ann Rule’s true‑crime biography exposes the chilling rise of serial killer Ted Bundy and the devastating realization she faced when she discovered the killer was her friend.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Biography

📘 I Have Lived a Thousand Years

A compelling biography of thirteen‑year‑old Elli Friedmann, a Jewish Hungarian girl whose life is shattered by the Holocaust and who refuses to give up hope even in a concentration camp.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Autobiography

📘 The Pianist

A true diary of Władysław Szpilman, a Jewish Polish pianist who survived the Warsaw Ghetto during the Holocaust.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Autobiography

📘 Desert solitaire

Explore the life and work of environmentalist and writer Edward Abbey, who spent the 1950s as a park ranger in the American Southwest.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Biography

📘 My inventions

A comprehensive, first‑hand account of Nikola Tesla’s inventions, compiled from his own notes and documents.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography Subgenre: Autobiography