Books like The Autobiography of Malcolm X

01

Long Walk to Freedom

Nelson Mandela · Memoir

Nelson Mandela's autobiography traces his life from a rural Xhosa childhood in the Transkei to his release from prison in 1990 after twenty-seven years of incarceration, and ends with his election as South Africa's first democratically chosen president in 1994.

A kindred memoir read.

02

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Maya Angelou · Memoir

Maya Angelou's first volume of autobiography covers her childhood and adolescence in Stamps, Arkansas and San Francisco during the 1930s and 1940s, ending with the birth of her son at age sixteen.

A kindred memoir read.

03

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption

Bryan Stevenson · Memoir

Bryan Stevenson's memoir of his career as a capital defense attorney in Alabama, and specifically of his years working on the case of Walter McMillian — a Black man wrongly convicted of murder and sentenced to death in Monroe County, Alabama — is simultaneously a riveting legal narrative and a sustained moral argument about the American criminal justice system's treatment of the poor and of Black defendants.

A kindred memoir read.

04

Boy Erased: A Memoir

Garrard Conley · Memoir

Boy Erased is Garrard Conley's memoir of attending Love in Action, a conversion therapy program in Memphis, Tennessee, in the early 2000s.

Both dig into religion.

05

The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother

James McBride · Memoir

James McBride grew up in Brooklyn and Queens as one of twelve children raised by a white Jewish woman who had converted to Christianity and married a Black minister.

Both dig into religion.

06

The Sixth Man

Andre Iguodala · Memoir

Andre Iguodala won four NBA championships and a Finals MVP award, but The Sixth Man is less interested in the games than in the social and psychological landscape those games happened inside.

Both dig into self-determination.

07

Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith

Jon Krakauer · Memoir

Under the Banner of Heaven opens with a specific crime: in 1984, Ron and Dan Lafferty — members of a fundamentalist Mormon splinter group — murdered their sister-in-law Brenda and her infant daughter, acting on a "revelation" they believed came directly from God.

Both dig into religion.

08

Bouncing Forward

Michaela Haas · Health

Bouncing Forward is Michaela Haas's examination of post-traumatic growth — the documented phenomenon in which people who survive severe trauma often report not just recovery but meaningful transformation.

Both dig into transformation.

09

Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon

Daniel C. Dennett · Philosophy

Breaking the Spell is Daniel Dennett's case that religion is a natural phenomenon — one that can and should be studied using the methods of evolutionary biology, cognitive science, and anthropology.

Both dig into religion.

10

Co-Active Coaching

Henry Kimsey-House, Karen Kimsey-House, Phillip Sandahl, and Laura Whitworth · Business

Co-Active Coaching presents the model developed at the Coaches Training Institute (CTI), which has trained more professional coaches than any other organization in the world.

Both dig into transformation.

11

God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

Christopher Hitchens · Religion & Spirituality

God Is Not Great is Christopher Hitchens' comprehensive polemic against religion, published in 2007 as part of the wave of "New Atheist" books that included Dawkins' The God Delusion, Harris' The End of Faith, and Dennett's Breaking the Spell.

Both dig into religion.

12

Invisible Man

Ralph Ellison · Literary fiction

Invisible Man opens with its unnamed Black narrator telling us, from a sealed underground room plastered with 1,369 lightbulbs, that he is invisible — not literally, but because white America refuses to see him.

Both dig into self-determination.