<p>I love an inspiring “real” story. What’s the best autobiography you have read? Or what autobiography would you recommend to someone?</p>
<p>I enjoyed Blackbird by Jennifer Lauck. She also did a follow up book, I can’t remember what it’s called though. I also enjoyed the Jane Fonda autobiography and I wasn’t a JF fan before I read it but it was a great read.</p>
<p>There is a family connection which made this even more inspiring: “Narrative of the Life and Times of Frederick Douglass”.</p>
<p>Jill Ker Conway, The Road from Coorain and True North. Born in Australia, Conway became a noted historian and president of Smith College.</p>
<p>Not so much “inspiring” but fascinating to me as someone too young to understand what was happening in the 60’s: James Carroll’s “An American Requiem: God, My Father and the War that Came Between Us”.<br>
The author was the son of an Air Force general who (the son) became a priest and then an anti-war activist. Full of people who were important in that era. Good Christmas present for your former hippie relatives, esp if Catholic.</p>
<p>“Life on the Color Line:The True Story of a White Boy Who Discovered He Was Black” by Gregory Williams…a phenomenal story and read.</p>
<p>I don’t know about best, but I loved Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth, mostly about the devastating effect of growing up in the WW1 era. Feynman’s Surely, You’re Joking Mr. Feynman is an awful lot of fun. I also really enjoyed both volumes of Roald Dahl’s autobiography Boy and Going Solo. And while it’s billed as fiction I loved Noel Streatfeild’s Parson’s Nine - when I read her biography I realized it was mostly her own life. (Another book where WW1 plays a heavy role.) The fact that it was really an autobiography explained something very peculiar that happens in the novel when her protagonist has an illicit love affair that she glosses over. It makes no sense at all in the novel, but lots of sense when you discover she’s writing about herself. I also liked Black Ice about a girl who is the first African American in a CT (if I am remembering correctly) boarding school. The school was very similar to the one I attended and the time period just about the same, so it hit very close to home.</p>
<p>Primetimemom, That is so strange that you would mention that book. I didn’t see anything appealing in the fiction section at the library this morning so I wondered over to the autobiography section. The book you mentioned Blackbird is the one that caught my eye. I had never heard of it before and decided to check it out. Now that I have read your post I am hoping to start it tomorrow.
I read a book recently called If I am missing or dead by J.Latus. It was disturbing but very interesting.</p>
<p>Here is a current, easy reading, heartwarming one by a guy I know. “How Starbucks Saved My Life” by Michael Gates Gill. Would make an excellent book club selection.</p>