Inspiring Biographies

Kisses From Katie: A Story of Relentless Love and Redemption, published in 2009, is a Christian memoir that follows the life of Katie Davis as she moves from the suburbs of Nashville to Uganda after high school to care for abandoned and orphaned children. This study guide refers to the 2011 First Howard Books hardcover edition.  Kisses From Katie is broken into 21 chapters that linearly tell the story of how Katie moved from Tennessee... Read Kisses from Katie Summary

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Published in 2019, Chanel Miller’s Know My Name: A Memoir is her first book. A harrowing account of surviving rape and reclaiming identity, Miller’s memoir documents her 2015 rape at Stanford University and its aftermath. A New York Times bestselling author, Miller provides a raw yet hopeful examination of sexual assault. Through the intersections of gender, race, and class, Miller, who is Chinese American, explores society’s treatment of survivors. Ultimately, Miller offers a hopeful journey... Read Know My Name: A Memoir Summary

Professor Hope Jahren’s 2016 memoir, Lab Girl, chronicles the author’s life and experience as a geobiologist. The memoir contains three parts, each spanning a major period in Jahren’s life. Autobiographical chapters are followed by brief, lyrical chapters examining various plants and their habits. These chapters on plants contain extensive use of personification, relating plant experience to that of humans.Part 1, “Roots and Leaves,” spans Jahren’s childhood to her first teaching job.The author grows up in... Read Lab Girl Summary

Lafayette in the Somewhat United States is a 2015 history of America written by Sarah Vowell. Vowell uses the perspective of the Marquis de Lafayette—a Frenchman who longed to fight with the Americans and win military glory—to give an irreverent, timely history of the United States, with relevant implications for America’s modern political situation.When Lafayette came to America, he was only 19. He was a wealthy, educated orphan who wanted to acquire personal honor and... Read Lafayette in the Somewhat United States Summary

Published in 1990, Lakota Woman is a memoir by Mary Crow Dog, member of the Brule Tribe of the Western Sioux and activist in the American Indian Movement. Crow Dog’s book recounts her increased awareness of the subjugation of her people and of women within her own tribe. It also discusses how poverty, alcoholism, and crime on the reservations are the inevitable results of government regulations that have oppressed and dehumanized Native Americans, forcing them... Read Lakota Woman Summary

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Left for Dead is a work of military nonfiction for young adults by Pete Nelson. It tells the true story of what happened to the men whose ship, the USS Indianapolis, sank during World War II in July 1945. Hunter Scott, who wrote an introduction for the book, studied the incident for a school history fair project and became determined to discover the truth about what happened. Dismayed by the miscarriage of justice surrounding the... Read Left for Dead Summary

Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust, by Immaculée Ilibagiza is an autobiography published in 2006. Immaculée is a survivor of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, which lasted from April to July that year. During this 100-day period, it is estimated that nearly a million Tutsis were killed by Hutus, the tribe that comprised the majority of Rwanda’s population at that time. Immaculée is a Tutsi and a 22-year-old college student when the genocide... Read Left To Tell Summary

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Originally published in 1989, Liar’s Poker is a nonfiction book that details author Michael Lewis’s experiences as a Wall Street bonds salesman in the late 1980s. Liar’s Poker is a betting game played with single dollar bills. In the book, bond traders at Salomon Brothers, an investment bank, play a much bigger betting game involving hundreds of millions of dollars, but the skills they require—daring, quick thinking, and ruthless bluffing—are basically the same as in... Read Liar’s Poker Summary

Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War is the third book by New York Times best-selling author Karen Abbott. Though Abbott has recently changed her publishing name to Abbott Kahler, because Liar Temptress, Soldier, Spy is still printed and published as authored by Karen Abbott, this guide will refer to the author by that name. Abbott often writes about American women’s history, focusing on overlooked stories, accomplishments, and contributions of women... Read Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy Summary

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Life in a Jar: The Irena Sendler Project is a work of creative nonfiction written by Jack Mayer and originally published in 2010. The book tells two overlapping stories. One is about Irena Sendler, a Polish social worker who helped save 2,500 Jewish children in Warsaw from the Nazis during World War II. The other is about three high school girls—Liz Cambers, Megan Stewart, and Sabrina Coons. In 1999, the girls, with the help of... Read Life in a Jar: The Irena Sendler Summary