Books like A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

01

Night

Elie Wiesel · Memoir

Night is Elie Wiesel's account of his deportation from the Transylvanian town of Sighet in 1944 and his survival of Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps.

Both dig into survival.

02

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

Laura Hillenbrand · Biography

Unbroken follows Louis Zamperini from his juvenile delinquency in Depression-era California to the 1936 Berlin Olympics, where he ran the 5,000 meters at nineteen and briefly caught Hitler's attention.

Shares war and survival with A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier.

03

Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood

Trevor Noah · Memoir

Born a Crime is Trevor Noah's memoir about growing up mixed-race in South Africa during the final years of apartheid and its chaotic aftermath.

Both dig into survival.

04

Man's Search for Meaning

Viktor E. Frankl · Psychology

Man's Search for Meaning is Viktor Frankl's account of his years as a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz, and the psychological theory he developed from that experience.

A kindred memoir read.

05

Hunger

Roxane Gay · Memoir

Hunger is Roxane Gay's memoir about her body, the trauma that shaped it, and the world's persistent refusal to accommodate it.

Shares trauma and survival with A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier.

06

The Diary of a Young Girl

Anne Frank · Memoir

Anne Frank's diary, kept during the two years she spent hiding with her family in a concealed Amsterdam apartment, stands as one of the most widely read first-person accounts of the Holocaust.

Shares war and survival with A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier.

07

The Liars' Club

Mary Karr · Memoir

Mary Karr's debut memoir about growing up in the oil-refinery town of Leechfield, Texas in the 1960s is widely credited with sparking the memoir boom of the 1990s.

Shares trauma and survival with A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier.

08

The Pianist: The Extraordinary True Story of One Man's Survival in Warsaw, 1939-45

Wladyslaw Szpilman · Memoir

The Pianist is Wladyslaw Szpilman's account of surviving the German occupation of Warsaw from 1939 to 1945.

Shares war and survival with A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier.

09

All Quiet on the Western Front

Erich Maria Remarque · History

All Quiet on the Western Front follows Paul Bäumer, a young German soldier who enlists with his classmates during the First World War after being swept up in patriotic speeches.

Shares war and survival with A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier.

10

Ghost Soldiers: The Forgotten Epic Story of World War II's Most Dramatic Mission

Hampton Sides · History

Ghost Soldiers tells the story of the January 1945 raid on the Cabanatuan prisoner-of-war camp in the Philippines — a mission to rescue 513 American and Allied prisoners, survivors of the Bataan Death March, before the retreating Japanese army could execute them.

Shares war and survival with A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier.

11

Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted

Suleika Jaouad · Memoir

Suleika Jaouad was twenty-two and newly graduated, living in Paris with her first real job and a boyfriend, when she was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia.

Both dig into survival.

12

Can't Hurt Me

David Goggins · Memoir

Can't Hurt Me is David Goggins's memoir of escaping an abusive childhood, failing military entrance requirements, becoming a Navy SEAL, and then becoming one of the most accomplished endurance athletes in the world — not through talent or privilege but through a deliberate, painful process of forcing himself past every limit he had.

Both dig into trauma.