Updates

  1. Person pages list letters, writing, profiles and links as sortable tables with filters, and show each person's companies as links; Fund letters show each letter's description in its own column.
  2. Experts show a checked job title and a short description of each person; 30 more people have photographs.
  3. Every company, fund, university and publication the experts work for has a page listing the people there.
  4. Fund letters show each letter's thesis and filter by it; 225 person pages list the essays, columns and newsletter issues the person wrote.
  5. Person pages list every essay and newsletter issue a person wrote, and their own books as a table in List view.
  6. Recommends shows the five largest kinds of book and the rest under More; browse pictures load sooner.
  7. Podcasts and talks link the original episode, filter by Audio and video or Press, and list each publisher once.
  8. Pages are wider, Recommends has List and Grid, and a filter clicked again turns off.
  9. Book cards sit in a ruled grid with Open Library and Goodreads links and each book's one-line note.
  10. Funds is now Investors; each investor's styles are buttons that filter the table.
  11. Podcasts and talks on a person's page filter by year and publisher and show as a list or a grid of pictures.
  12. Quotes show only people's own words: 472 summaries written by list sites are gone.
  13. Country pages open from Browse again, and every link on the shelf lands on a page.
  14. Subject and person pages show their sections as tabs, and each book appears once on a person's page.
  15. Book cards show the quote, who said it and the source; grids show five cards to a row.
  16. On a phone, a menu holds the sections, search, Updates, Feedback and dark mode.
  17. Feedback takes a screenshot of the page with no browser prompt, opens a screenshot full size when you click it, and clears itself once sent.
  18. Book cards are centred, search names the topic each book sits in, and any text cut short shows whole on hover.
  19. Search groups its results by kind: people, companies, geographies, subjects, topics, books, funds, fund letters and papers.
  20. The Books table lists who recommended each book by name, and the browser tab names the section you are in.
  21. Feedback can take a screenshot of the page, or one you paste or choose, and opens in the corner beside Updates.
  22. Each rail button reopens its section where you left it, and Browse, Table and People show on every book and subject page.
  23. Filters grey out choices that hold nothing instead of hiding them, and Books › People filters by authors or recommenders.
  24. Feedback takes a subject line and up to three screenshots.
  25. Biographies are grouped by the person they are about: 41 new pages, from Abraham Lincoln to Lee Kuan Yew.
  26. Sport splits into 23 sports, and Religion into one topic per faith.
  27. Book lists show as cards: the cover, one recommendation quote and every recommender by name.
  28. Seventeen subjects that had two or three pages under different names now have one page each.
  29. Every page lists its Experts as authors and recommenders, with a link to them on the Experts tab.
  30. Economics, Financial history, Financial panics and Accounting are subjects of their own, with one page per financial crisis.
  31. Book, person and subject pages open inside the app, so the tabs stay in view.
  32. 996 more book covers, and photographs or logos for 227 more people and companies.
  33. Books › Browse shows every subject as cards, and the rail holds Fund letters, Papers, Experts, Books and Funds.
  34. Every topic over 150 books splits into narrower topics, each with a page of its own.

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Personal and Spiritual Memoirs

Memoirs of private lives: childhood and family, illness and death, identity, survival, faith and spiritual practice, and personal essays.

Start here

  1. Small FryLisa Brennan-Jobs, 2018
  2. HindsightsGuy Kawasaki, 1993
  3. WildCheryl Strayed, 1767
  4. Hyperbole and a HalfAllie Brosh, 1900
  5. The ChoiceDr. Edith Eva Eger, 1900
Lisa Brennan-Jobs · 2018

A daughter's memoir of a California childhood between her mother and Steve Jobs.

Recommended by: Andrew Wilkinson, Vlad Tenev

Guy Kawasaki · 1993

Recommended by: Mohnish Pabrai

Dr. Edith Eva Eger · 1900

A memoir of surviving Auschwitz and a psychologist's guide to healing from trauma.

Recommended by: Bill Gates, Morgan Housel

William Seabrook · 1935

Recommended by: Ryan Holiday

William Seabrook · 1942

Confessions of an American writer who travelled widely and lived unconventionally.

Recommended by: Ryan Holiday

John Howard Griffin · 1960

Recommended by: David Kadavy

Gerald Durrell · 1963

A comic memoir of a boyhood on Corfu with an odd family and the island's wildlife.

Recommended by: Paul Graham

Christopher Isherwood · 1965

The life and spiritual attainment of Ramakrishna in a temple near Calcutta.

Recommended by: Steve Jobs

Viktor E. Frankl · 1968

Life in Nazi concentration camps, and logotherapy: finding meaning to survive.

“I have been deeply influenced by the existentialist and eminent psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, who wrote the perennial best seller Man's Search for Meaning, one of the most influential books I've ever…” — Frank Martin

Source: Martin on one of the most influential books he has read and reread

Recommended by: Frank Martin, Mohnish Pabrai, Nat Eliason and 24 others

Richard Rodríguez · 1982

Recommended by: Sam Altman

Tetsuko Kuroyanagi · 1984

Recommended by: Ryan Holiday

Terry Tempest Williams, Dan Frank · 1991

A naturalist's mother dies of cancer as the rising Great Salt Lake threatens birds.

Recommended by: Mohnish Pabrai

David Sedaris · 1997

Comic essays on a life from a Raleigh childhood to drink- and drug-filled college.

Recommended by: Sophie Bakalar

Laurence Shames, Peter Barton · 2003
Morrie Schwartz · 2005

A professor living with ALS sets out his philosophy of living and of letting go.

Recommended by: Mohnish Pabrai

Helen MacDonald · 2006

Recommended by: Diana Kimball

Michael Gates Gill · 2007

Insider account: a fired ad executive's memoir as a barista.

Dan Kennedy · 2007

Recommended by: Andrew Wilkinson

Jill Bolte Taylor · 2008

A brain scientist watches her own mind shut down during a massive stroke.

Recommended by: Ray Dalio

Miklós Nyiszli · 2011

Recommended by: Sophie Bakalar

Mark Shriver · 2012

Recommended by: Bryan Johnson

Jacob Tomsky · 2012

A decade working in hotels, from valet to front desk, and the hustles behind them.

Recommended by: Mohnish Pabrai

Christopher Hitchens · 2012

Candid thoughts on illness and mortality.

Recommended by: Andrew Wilkinson

Scott Adams · 2013

The Dilbert creator's many failures and what they taught him about success.

Dan Harris · 2014

A news anchor's panic attack on air leads him to meditation, and what it did for him.

Ta-Nehisi Coates · 2015

A letter to the author's teenage son about living in a black body in America.

Maggie Nelson · 2015

Recommended by: Audrey Gelman

Lindy West · 2016

Recommended by: Jessica Hische

Paul Kalanithi · 2016

A neurosurgeon diagnosed with lung cancer at 36 asks what makes life worth living.

Catherine Burns, Neil Gaiman · 2017

Recommended by: Zoë Foster Blake

Bill Hayes · 2017

“It's a memoir about the sudden death of a partner and what ripples out from there. Made me want to move to New York ASAP. I pounded through it in a few days while I was on vacation, highly recommend.” — Andrew Wilkinson

Source: Newsletter

Recommended by: Andrew Wilkinson

David Goggins · 2018

From abused child and 300-pound exterminator to Navy SEAL, and how to get tough.

Jerry Colonna · 2019

Recommended by: Brad Feld, Kirsten Green

Richie Jackson · 2020

Recommended by: Arianna Huffington

Prince Harry, The Duke of Sussex · 2023

“It turns out it's ghost written by J.R. Moehringer, who has written some of my favourite biographies. Highly recommend.” — Andrew Wilkinson

Source: Newsletter

Recommended by: Andrew Wilkinson

Salman Rushdie · 2024

Recommended by: Andrew Wilkinson

Various Authors

Recommended by: Richard Branson

David Gelernter

Recommended by: Keith Rabois

Gerald Durrell

Recommended by: Paul Graham

More biographies