Books like Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

01

Educated: A Memoir

Tara Westover · Memoir

Educated is Tara Westover's memoir about growing up in a survivalist family in rural Idaho and eventually earning a PhD in history from Cambridge University.

A kindred memoir read.

02

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.

A kindred memoir read.

03

Becoming

Michelle Obama · Memoir

Becoming is Michelle Obama's account of how a girl from a modest house on Chicago's South Side became one of the most recognized people in the world — and what that journey cost and revealed.

A kindred memoir read.

04

The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Malcolm X and Alex Haley · Memoir

The Autobiography of Malcolm X was assembled from a series of conversations between Malcolm X and the journalist Alex Haley, conducted over two years before Malcolm's assassination in February 1965.

A kindred memoir read.

05

Demon Copperhead

Barbara Kingsolver · Literary fiction

Demon Copperhead is Barbara Kingsolver's retelling of David Copperfield, transposed from Victorian England to the opioid-ravaged mountains of southwest Virginia.

Shares appalachian identity and addiction with Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis.

06

Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction

David Sheff · Memoir

Beautiful Boy is David Sheff's account of watching his son Nic become addicted to methamphetamine through his late teens and early twenties, and of the years Sheff spent trying to understand it, respond to it, and survive it as a parent.

Both dig into addiction.

07

Homage to Catalonia

George Orwell · Memoir

Homage to Catalonia is George Orwell's firsthand account of fighting in the Spanish Civil War, which he joined in late 1936 as a volunteer with the POUM militia — a Trotskyist revolutionary organization that was later suppressed by the Soviet-backed Stalinist wing of the Republican forces.

Both dig into class.

08

Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

Anthony Bourdain · Memoir

Kitchen Confidential began as an essay in The New Yorker in 1999.

Both dig into addiction.

09

Life

Keith Richards · Memoir

Keith Richards's Life was written with journalist James Fox and published when Richards was 66, after more than fifty years with the Rolling Stones.

Both dig into addiction.

10

Scar Tissue

Anthony Kiedis · Memoir

Scar Tissue is Anthony Kiedis's account of his life from a chaotic childhood in Michigan through the formation and commercial peak of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, with addiction and recovery as the book's spine.

Both dig into addiction.

11

The Basketball Diaries

Jim Carroll · Memoir

The Basketball Diaries is Jim Carroll's account of his teenage years in New York City during the late 1960s, drawn from journals he kept between ages thirteen and sixteen.

Both dig into addiction.

12

The Glass Castle: A Memoir

Jeannette Walls · Memoir

The Glass Castle is Jeannette Walls's memoir about growing up as the second of four children in a family that moved constantly across the American Southwest and West Virginia, rarely had enough to eat, and existed almost entirely outside conventional institutions.

Both dig into family dysfunction.