100 Memoirs

Candidates rise or fall depending upon how voters feel about the stories they tell and the stories others tell about them.  That’s why in recent years political conventions often feature films with the candidate as the hero, and hastily-written biographies usually crop up on Amazon and in the bookstores.  John Kerry was savaged by a [...]

Yesterday’s New York Times carried an op-ed from Mary Karr about the way opponents of Barack Obama like to diminish him by calling him a memoirist, just as they make fun of his career as a community organizer.
Karr, who has written several excellent memoirs herself, including
and
describes why memoir writing is a good [...]

I live in a new neighborhood carved out of the Michigan woods. My husband and I fell in love with the winding road that led through pines into hardwoods, a road that now connects about twenty new houses to the highway. As the first residents of this new community, we had the opportunity [...]

Today Barack Obama will announce his choice of a running mate for the race to the White House. I did not sign up for his text message. Instead, I am reading one of his memoirs, Dreams from My Father. I can already tell you that the book is beautifully structured and written. [...]