Better: How I Let Go of Control, Held On to Hope, and Found Joy in My Darkest Hour

Every Day I Fight

Stuart Scott, Larry Platt · 298 pages

Shortly before he passed away, on January 4, 2015, Stuart Scott completed work on this memoir. It was both a labor of love and a love letter to life itself. Not only did Stuart relate his personal story -- his childhood in North Carolina, his supportive family, his athletic escapades, his on-the-job training as a fledgling sportscaster, his being hired and eventual triumphs at ESPN -- he shared hi

Mean Baby: A Memoir of Growing Up

Selma Blair · 320 pages

My Book of Days

Eric Dane

True Strength: My Journey from Hercules to Mere Mortal and How Nearly Dying Saved My Life

Kevin Sorbo · 296 pages

Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness

Susannah Cahalan · 288 pages

The book narrates Cahalan's issues with anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis and the process by which she was diagnosed with this form of encephalitis. She wakes up in a hospital with no memory of the events of the previous month, during which time she would have violent episodes and delusions. Her eventual diagnosis is made more difficult by various physicians misdiagnosing her with several theories s

The Council of Dads: My Daughters, My Illness, and the Men Who Could Be Me

Bruce Feiler · 240 pages

Bestselling author Bruce Feiler was a young father when he was diagnosed with cancer. He instantly worried what his daughters' lives would be like without him. "Would they wonder who I was? Would they wonder what I thought? Would they yearn for my approval, my love, my voice?"Three days later he came up with a stirring idea of how he might give them that voice. He would reach out to six men from a

Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things

Jenny Lawson

"In Furiously Happy, #1 New York Times bestselling author Jenny Lawson explores her lifelong battle with mental illness. A hysterical, ridiculous book about crippling depression and anxiety? That sounds like a terrible idea. But terrible ideas are what Jenny does best.As Jenny says: "Some people might think that being 'furiously happy' is just an excuse to be stupid and irresponsible and invite a

Still Me

Christopher Reeve · 316 pages

For the first time Christopher Reeve tells the full story of both his paralysis, and his journey to recovery.Through his leading role in the three 'Superman' films, Christopher Reeve became so closely identified with the superhero that he wasn't just seen as the actor who played Superman, he was Superman. Which is why the tragic riding accident which left him paralysed from the neck down shocked t

Famesick: A Memoir

Lena Dunham

In this rowdy, frank reflection on illness, fame, sex, and everything in between, the remarkable mind behind the hit series Girls and the bestselling author of Not That Kind of Girl asks whether fulfilling her creative ambitions has been worth the pain.

90 Minutes in Heaven: A True Story of Death & Life

Don Piper · 304 pages

It's Not Yet Dark

Simon Fitzmaurice · 184 pages

In 2008, Simon Fitzmaurice was diagnosed with ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease. He was given four years to live. In 2010, in a state of lung-function collapse, Simon knew with crystal clarity that now was not his time to die. Against all prevailing medical opinion, he chose to ventilate in order to stay alive.

When Breath Becomes Air

Paul Kalanithi · 256 pages

At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi’s transformation from a naïve me

Lucky Man

Michael J. Fox · 304 pages

This memoir discusses Michael J. Fox’s life--growing up in Canada and then becoming a national television star in the U.S. at the age of 19. Fox reveals the excess and temptations he fell into as a young star, and how with the help of his wife, Tracy Pollan, he quit drinking and drowning in self-pity. He tells of noticing the first tremors of Parkinson’s disease, which he ignored; finding out at t

Going Off Script: How I Survived a Crazy Childhood, Cancer, and Clooney's 32 On-Screen Rejections

Giuliana Rancic · 269 pages

"A funny, warm, and inspiring memoir from E! News host, Fashion Police panelist, red-carpet correspondent, author, and reality show star Giuliana Rancic.Giuliana Rancic is best known for interviewing A-listers on E! News and the red carpet, skewering their most questionable sartorial decisions on Fashion Police, and giving viewers a front-row seat to her marriage and home life on her reality show,

Every Second Counts

Lance Armstrong, Sally Jenkins · 246 pages

An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

Kay Redfield Jamison · 223 pages

From Kay Redfield Jamison - an international authority on manic-depressive illness, and one of the few women who are full professors of medicine at American universities - a remarkable personal testimony: the revelation of her own struggle since adolescence with manic-depression, and how it has shaped her life. Vividly, directly, with candor, wit, and simplicity, she takes us into the fascinating

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Jean-Dominique Bauby · 141 pages

The author, former editor of French Elle magazine, describes the rare stroke to the brain stem that left his mind intact in a nearly totally paralyzed body.

Wide Awake and Dreaming: A Memoir

Julie Flygare · 214 pages

The Story of My Tits

Jennifer Hayden · 344 pages

"When Jennifer Hayden was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 43, she realized that her tits told a story. Across a lifetime, they'd held so many meanings: hope and fear, pride and embarrassment, life and death. And then they were gone. Now, their story has become a way of understanding her story: a journey from the innocence of youth to the chaos of adulthood, through her mother's mastecto

Stir: My Broken Brain and the Meals That Brought Me Home

Jessica Fechtor · 279 pages

" M.F.K. Fisher meets Brain on Fire in this exquisite memoir of a 28-year-old food blogger who cooks her way back to health after a near-fatal aneurysm Jessica Fechtor was on top of the world: a Harvard graduate student, happily married, and thinking about starting a family. Then, while attending an academic conference, she went for a run and an aneurysm burst in her brain. Multiple surgeries left

My Life in France

Julia Child, Alex Prud'Homme · 344 pages

Julia Child singlehandedly created a new approach to American cuisine with her cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking and her television show The French Chef, but as she reveals in this bestselling memoir, she was not always a master chef. Indeed, when she first arrived in France in 1948 with her husband, Paul, who was to work for the USIS, she spoke no French and knew nothing about the coun

Regine's Book: A Teen Girl's Last Words

Regine Stokke · 336 pages

Everybody's Got Something

Robin Roberts, Veronica Chambers · 263 pages

It's Always Something

Gilda Radner · 255 pages

A biography of the comedienne describing her career, her time as part of the original cast of "Saturday Night Live," and her battle with cancer.