Inspiring Biographies

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Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster by Svetlana Alexievich is a collection of 35 first-person oral accounts of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster in the former Soviet Union. Originally published in Russian in 1997, the book was translated into English by Keith Gessen in 2005; it has been translated into almost every European language. Alexievich, a Belarusian investigative journalist, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for Voices from Chernobyl in... Read Voices from Chernobyl Summary

Walden opens with Thoreau’s explanation of his two-year independent living project on Walden Pond, which spanned from 1845 to 1847. He illuminates his desire to live a solitary, simple life outside of civilization. Over the course of these two years, Thoreau describes his experiences including his immersion in nature, the process of growing his own food, and the pleasure he derives from contemplating the beauty of the woods. He also reflects on the most basic elements... Read Walden Summary

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John Lewis’s 1998 memoir, Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement, written with Mike D’Orso, is an intimate firsthand account of the US Civil Rights Movement (CRM). Lewis, the child of sharecroppers, grew up in Pike County, Alabama, during the heyday of segregation in the American South. From a young age, Lewis questioned the injustices of segregation, yet never imagined that he would become one of the key leaders of the civil rights... Read Walking with the Wind Summary

Originally published in 1994, Warriors Don’t Cry by Melba Pattillo Beals primarily focuses on the 1957-58 school year at Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, during which Beals was a member of the Little Rock Nine—the first group of Black students to attend the formerly all-white high school of 2,000 white students. Beals’s book, written for young-adult readers, speaks of her early life and her many adult accomplishments. Encouraged by school administrators and local... Read Warriors Don't Cry Summary

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We Beat the Street: How A Friendship Pact Led to Success is a New York Times best-selling nonfiction work published in 2005 that examines the lives and choices of three friends and now-doctors Sampson Davis, Rameck Hunt, and George Jenkins. The book was co-authored with the help of award-winning children's author Sharon M. Draper. Plot SummarySampson, Rameck, and George hail from dangerous and underprivileged neighborhoods in Newark, NJ. Though the boys come from loving families... Read We Beat the Street Summary

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Josh Sundquist is a cancer survivor, Paralympic ski racer, motivational speaker, and stand-up comedian. Sundquist’s memoir Just Don't Fall: How I Grew Up, Conquered Illness, and Made It Down the Mountain was published in 2010 and became a national bestseller. While his first memoir showed how he was able to overcome health challenges to become a sporting hero, his second book We Should Hang Out Sometime: Embarrassingly, a True Story (2014) deals with the most... Read We Should Hang Out Sometime: Embarassingly, A True Story Summary

West With the Night (1942) is a memoir by Beryl Markham. Markham writes about her childhood among indigenous Kenyans, who accepted and included the English girl in their traditional customs. The author grew up hunting with a spear and speaking Swahili while also learning about raising and training racehorses from her father, Charles Clutterbuck. The danger and adventure she experienced as a child became the hallmarks of her living experiences as an adult. A chance... Read West with the Night Summary

We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda (1998) describes the Hutu majority’s slaughter of at least 800,000 Tutsis in 100 days in 1994—with author and journalist Philip Gourevitch documenting the meticulous planning behind the genocide. Gourevitch chastises the international community, especially the United States and France, for failing to stop the genocide in accordance with obligations under the Genocide Convention. Visiting Rwanda one year after... Read We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families Summary

Kate Fagan’s What Made Maddy Run: The Secret Struggles and Tragic Death of an All-American Teen (2017) centers on Madison Holleran, a promising young athlete at the University of Pennsylvania who committed suicide in 2014. This is a work of narrative journalism that grew out of Fagan’s award-winning ESPN essay “Split Image” (2015). Fagan brings her experiences as a college athlete on a Division I team and her expertise as a sports journalist to explore... Read What Made Maddy Run Summary

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When Breath Becomes Air is a memoir by Paul Kalanithi. It was published in 2016. Kalanithi tells the story of his battle with cancer while being a practicing neurosurgeon. The book is organized chronologically, following the trajectory of his life from childhood to death, and is laced with deep philosophical thought and literary prose. His meditations combine the expertise of a professional with the experience of a patient, resulting in a book that communicates extremely... Read When Breath Becomes Air Summary

Chanrithy Him’s memoir, When Broken Glass Floats: Growing Up Under the Khmer Rouge, was first published in 2000. This study guide refers to the 2001 Kindle edition. In the text Him details her experiences as a young child in Cambodia. Him was only five when the autocratic communist Khmer Rouge took over the country, and she recounts the trauma she endured during the five years the regime remained in power. Him’s father was beaten to... Read When Broken Glass Floats Summary

When China Ruled the Seas: The Treasure Fleet of the Dragon Throne, 1405–1433 is a nonfiction book published in 1994 by Louise Levathes. In a narrative that predates the voyages of Christopher Columbus, Levathes examines a three-decade period in the early 15th century when China launched seven major sea voyages. Levathes holds a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University and worked for ten years as a staff writer for National Geographic. In 1990, she... Read When China Ruled the Seas Summary

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The memoir When I Was Puerto Rican recounts author Esmeralda Santiago’s early years. It is the first of her three memoirs chronicling her childhood in Puerto Rico to her eventual residence in the United States. It is a coming of age story, but mines richer material than that. Questions of identity—national identity, hereditary identity, familial identity, female identity, spiritual identity, and semantic labels—underpin the stories Santiago tells.The book begins in Puerto Rico, when Esmeralda is... Read When I Was Puerto Rican Summary