Books like The Choice

01

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.

02

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.

A kindred memoir read.

03

Know My Name: A Memoir

Chanel Miller · Memoir

Know My Name is Chanel Miller's memoir of being sexually assaulted behind a dumpster at Stanford University in 2015, being identified publicly as only "Emily Doe" throughout the subsequent trial, and the experience of navigating a legal process while the perpetrator — Stanford swimmer Brock Turner — became the more visible subject of the story.

A kindred memoir read.

04

The Hiding Place

Corrie ten Boom · Memoir

Corrie ten Boom's memoir of her family's decision to hide Jewish people in their Haarlem home during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, and of the arrest, imprisonment, and concentration camp ordeal that followed, has been continuously in print since its 1971 publication and is one of the most widely read Christian testimonies of the twentieth century.

A kindred memoir read.

05

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.

06

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Harriet Jacobs · Memoir

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, published in 1861 under the pseudonym Linda Brent, is Harriet Jacobs's account of her life as an enslaved woman in North Carolina, her resistance to her enslaver's sexual harassment, her years in hiding, and her eventual escape to the North.

Both dig into freedom.

07

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

Tom Wolfe · Memoir

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, published in 1968, is Tom Wolfe's account of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters — the group of psychedelic adventurers who drove a painted bus across the United States in 1964, staged LSD-fueled "Acid Tests" in California, and became one of the central myths of the 1960s counterculture.

Both dig into freedom.

08

The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit

Michael Finkel · Memoir

In 1986, a twenty-year-old named Christopher Knight drove into the woods of central Maine, abandoned his car, and walked into the forest.

Both dig into freedom.

09

The Warmth of Other Suns

Isabel Wilkerson · Memoir

Isabel Wilkerson's account of the Great Migration — the movement of six million Black Americans from the South to the North and West between 1915 and 1970 — is one of the most important works of narrative nonfiction published in the twenty-first century.

Both dig into freedom.

10

Twelve Years a Slave

Solomon Northup · Memoir

Twelve Years a Slave, published in 1853, is the memoir of Solomon Northup, a free Black man from New York who was kidnapped in 1841, sold into slavery in Louisiana, and held for twelve years before recovering his freedom.

Both dig into freedom.

11

12 Rules for Life

Jordan Peterson · Self-help

12 Rules for Life is Jordan Peterson's attempt to distill what clinical psychology, comparative mythology, the Bible, and evolutionary biology say about how to live.

Both dig into psychology.

12

Being and Nothingness

Jean-Paul Sartre · Philosophy

Being and Nothingness is Sartre's major philosophical treatise and the founding text of French existentialism.

Both dig into freedom.