Powell's Books Recommends - Biography & Memoir

Catfish and Mandala: A Two-Wheeled Voyage Through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam by Andrew X. Pham
Catfish and Mandala is remarkably honest about painful family memories and genuinely insightful about the ephemeral nature of cultural identity. The author's family fled Vietnam when he was ten and settled in the United States. Eventually, he rebels against both his family's and his adopted culture's expectations of him and makes a bicycle pilgrimage back to his homeland via Mexico and Japan. By turns painful, funny and thought-provoking, this book will be very interesting and helpful for a wide variety of readers: Asian-Americans, Vietnam vets, travelers, or anyone caught between cultures or competing identities. A classic American story and the best memoir I have read this year.

Recommended by Michal

Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey by Jane Goodall
By any account, Jane Goodall is one of this century's great naturalist-scientists. Her monumental discoveries about chimpanzees have forced the Western world to reevaluate its basic assumptions about our human identity and our role in the natural environment. To accelerate this reeducation, Ms. Goodall has lectured to hundreds of thousands of people across the globe (she is on the road about 300 days each year) to raise awareness of the need to bring reason and compassion - and, admittedly, a little money, too - to the issues of upon which she's based her career. In this book, she has set out to answer her readers' most frequently asked question: In the face of such enormous problems, what inspires you to keep going? The answer, Reason for Hope, demonstrates that she is as thoughtful and eloquent on the subjects of spirituality and faith as she is about chimpanzees or the environment. Reason for Hope offers just that; it's a great inspiration to us all.

Recommended by Farley

Eleanor Roosevelt: Volume 2 1933-1938 by Blanche Wiesen Cook
Blanche Wiesen Cook's 1992 biography of the first five decades of Eleanor Roosevelt's life received both critical and popular acclaim, quickly establishing itself the best work yet on the greatest - and most inspiring - American woman of the century. Now Ms. Cook has brought her considerable knowledge and insight to bear on the next phase of Mrs. Roosevelt's life: the first six years of FDR's presidency. And though I would certainly recommend reading the first volume of this biography, Eleanor Roosevelt 1884-1933, Cook wisely wrote this new installment to stand alone. Eleanor Roosevelt: 1933-1938 provides a complex social and political record of a difficult and heroic era, revealing those years through the events surrounding one of its most prominent and interesting figures. In careful detail, Cook explores the contribution to New Deal politics not only of Eleanor Roosevelt, but also of a remarkable group of female reformers of the day. She also provides an interesting account of how the White House - and the nation - perceived Nazi Germany during the first part of the war, and what they actually knew about their treatment of the Jews.

Recommended by Jo

Son of the Revolution by Liang Heng, Judith Shapiro, Heng Liang
A riveting account of a man who grew up during the life-destroying period of the Cultural Revolution in China. Liang Heng has lived a tumultuous life most Americans can barely fathom: parents who divorce due to political pressure, joining the Red Guard at 12, battles in the street, life on the run, and the destruction of everything previously held dear. But, in a fascinating and ironic twist, it is basketball that provides him with his chance to find a better life. This book gives an account of one man's life during the Cultural Revolution that will haunt you long after you've put it down.

Recommended by Robin