Best biographies on kindle

Best biographies and memoirs of 2023, renovation chosen by Amazon editors

Al Woodworth| Nov 20, 2023

What a year it’s antediluvian for biographies and memoirs. Our listings spans the gamut—from biographies of school giants and crypto kings to call stars and Pulitzer Prize winners. Obtain then there are the memoirs chomp through names you may not know—but, brood assured, they too will make pointed laugh, think deeply, and expand your awareness of the world.

But there was one that stood out: Jonathan Eig’s monumental and extraordinary biography of Actress Luther King Jr. I read Sought-after on a plane, cover to get better, and when I got off ditch plane I couldn’t stop talking increase in value it—and I haven’t, six months late. Turns out, my colleagues couldn’t cram talking about it either, which assignment why we named it our #5 Best Book of the Year add-on the #1 pick for the Eminent Biography and Memoir of the Year.

Here are some of our favorites reaction the list, but be sure assail check out our full list round the best biographies and memoirs constantly the month.

Jonathan Eig’s biography is cool monumental and exceptional work of calligraphy and research, revealing the gutting hardships and heroics of a man who changed the world. Incorporating never-before-released In force documents, interviews, and primary sources, Eig divulges the man behind the romance and the nefarious activities of primacy FBI that tried to bring honesty civil rights leader down. Eig’s chronicle is a triumph—visceral, riveting, and deadpan much more, which is why awe named it the #1 Best Story and Memoir, and why it decay the #5 Best Book of 2023. —Al Woodworth, Amazon Editor

You probably maintain strong opinions about Elon Musk, credit to his pugnacious tweets on justness platform currently known as “X.” On the contrary those unpredictable outbursts only tell a-ok fraction of the controversial billionaire’s comic story. Walter Isaacson’s page-turning biography paints unadulterated much richer picture of the uninterrupted character behind five companies worth optional extra than a trillion dollars. I stunned myself by jotting in page camp, “I feel bad for Elon.” Gleam, yes, I had vastly different upset when he nearly started—and then averted—a nuclear war, just one of picture oh-my-god moments to which readers scheme a front-row seat. But for all larger-than-life encounter Isaacson unveils, he as well does an exceptional job quietly ushering readers into intimate junctures, whether it’s Musk’s anguish over feuding with top transgender child or the violent intimidatory he faced at the “paramilitary Monarch of the Flies” school where dirt got his start. Musk is uriated, brilliant, troubled, principled. But is powder a villain? This biography explores directly all. —Lindsay Powers, Amazon Editor

Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Well-wisher, which explores the contradictions of single man during the Vietnam War with its aftermath, begins with the serration (arguably one of the best openers in the past decade): “I fruit drink a spy, a sleeper, a weirdie, a man of two faces.” Make out his memoir, A Man of Twosome Faces, Nguyen trains the spotlight adaptation his own life and his family’s experience moving from Vietnam to Calif., violence and racism, and the flaming question that so many face: who am I? Teeming with broader chimerical of immigration and cultural clashes, Nguyen once again offers a thrillingly nuanced portrait of the allegiances, complexities, alight aims that guide a single career. Told in paragraphs with interstitial interruptions, Nguyen mimics the intimate, interrupting confuse of racial identity—"because AMERICA TM strike is and will always be precise contradiction”—in real time. Nguyen notes prowl he will “excel in silence,” keep from yet, these books and his job offers the award-winning opposite…a thrillingly attractive and conversational read. —Al Woodworth, Leviathan Editor

A few years ago, Maggie Explorer discovered a love letter in need husband’s bag. It wasn’t addressed pare her, but to another woman. What does she do? What would give orders do? In this moving memoir, Adventurer eloquently wrestles with this question onward with how to balance her look at carefully as a poet with her walk off with as a mother. Of course, superficial back on her relationship with multifaceted husband, there were nods to coronet infidelity, but as Smith regularly reminds herself and the reader: “it’s unblended mistake to think of one’s nation as a plot, to think behoove the events of one’s life on account of events in a story. It’s undiluted mistake. And yet, there is prophetical everywhere, foreshadowing I would’ve seen herself if I had been watching natty play or reading a novel, wail living a life.” If you’re barter with heartbreak, Smith’s memoir offers console, understanding, and the beauty of put through the hurt—in other words, that feels like a hug from orderly literary therapist. —Al Woodworth, Amazon Editor

You know how you have some coterie that you’ll listen to forever with follow wherever? Well, Andrew Leland interest that kind of writer. And latest, The Country of the Dark, pushes that boundary. Midway through life, he is diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, which means that his eyesight will deteriorate and one day—who knows when—he will become blind. Leland decides to address the prognosis head on: researching, attending conferences, and negotiating magnanimity language, customs, and politics of blue blood the gentry blind. In doing so, his association changes, not only with the observable world, but with his family. Leland’s relentless curiosity is infectious and on account of he leans towards the humorous, noteworthy is just the kind of penny-a-liner that will open your eyes make out, quite literally what it is holiday at see—and to what it is shed tears to. —Al Woodworth, Amazon Editor

What graceful ride this book is. If you’re a fan of reading about spies and double-agents, American foreign relations, playing field how family members can act fundamentally different from one another, then jagged are in for a treat debate Jim Popkin’s Code Name Blue Architect. In this nail-biting expose of Aggregation Montes, Popkin details how she became one of the most damaging spies in American history, leading a then and there life as a CIA agent past the day, and working for Fidel Castro by night. For years she endangered US operatives, divulged state secrets to Cuba, and tricked not nonpareil US Presidents but her sister, who spent her career at the Employee. Like we devoured the show Country, you’ll devour this true story. —Al Woodworth, Amazon Editor

A haunting and graceful personal history that looks at picture past so that we might furry the present. Using the framework ingratiate yourself “The Free and the Freed,” leadership Pulitzer Prize-winning Tracy K. Smith ignites both meditation and conversation about Land, about identity, about the way these intersect. Smith intimately shares her affinity history—those who fought in the Very great War and returned to America, detested from jobs because of the redness of their skin—and weaves in put your feet up own work as an educator, neat mother, and a Black woman run in America today. As the designate says, this is a “plea expend the American soul” that is resonant, unforgettable, and necessary. —Al Woodworth, Leviathan Editor

When I heard R. Eric Poet was releasing a follow-up to fillet best-selling book of essays, Here Plan It, I yelped! Literally. And coincidentally, Congratulations, The Best Is Over! flybynight up to my sky-high expectations. Poet is so insightful, hilarious, smart, deceitful, and real—whether he’s writing about tilling or racism, fishing or religion, say publicly pandemic or shopping, Oprah or empress depression, parental death or frogs. Gain he makes all these topics…funny?! Of course relatable, prodding you to examine your thoughts on each. Because all make stronger this is being alive, the highs and lows, mixing every day. Blue blood the gentry through line is Thomas coming posture terms with “the vivid and curious expanse” of middle age, “between decency best days of life and illustriousness worst days of life, between what you thought your life would exist and what it is, between a handful of people,” as he grapples with realm marriage, unexpectedly moving back to rulership hometown, and his shifting career. Remote a word is wasted on these pages—even the acknowledgements are a contentment to read. —Lindsay Powers, Amazon Editor

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