🧲 Books like this
Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival
Anderson Cooper · back to the book
What’s in it
Tap a tag: ❤ = this matters to me · tap again ✕ = don’t care · again to reset. The list below updates each time.
24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorBetween the World and Me
Ta-Nehisi Coates · 155 pages
An Amazon Best Book of July 2015: Readers of his work in The Atlantic and elsewhere know Ta-Nehisi Coates for his thoughtful and influential writing on race in America. Written as a series of letters to his teenaged son, his new memoir, Between the World and Me, walks us through the course of his life, from the tough neighborhoods of Baltimore in his youth, to Howard University—which Coates dubs “
1 Dead in Attic: Post-Katrina Stories
Chris Rose · 384 pages
A Promised Land
Barack Obama · 768 pages
A riveting, deeply personal account of history in the making-from the president who inspired us to believe in the power of democracy. In the stirring, highly anticipated first volume of his presidential memoirs, Barack Obama tells the story of his improbable odyssey from young man searching for his identity to leader of the free world, describing in strikingly personal detail both his political
Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust
Immaculee Ilibagiza · 215 pages
Immaculee Ilibagiza grew up in a country she loved, surrounded by a family she cherished. But in 1994 her idyllic world was ripped apart as Rwanda descended into a bloody genocide. Immaculee's family was brutally murdered during a killing spree that lasted three months and claimed the lives of nearly a million Rwandans. Incredibly, Immaculee survived the slaughter. For 91 days, she and seven other
Nujeen: One Girl's Incredible Journey from War‐Torn Syria in a Wheelchair
Nujeen Mustafa · 312 pages
This book tells the inspiring true story of a remarkable young hero: Nujeen Mustafa, a teenager born with cerebral palsy, whose harrowing journey from war-ravaged Syria to Germany in a wheelchair is a breathtaking tale of fortitude, grit, and hope that lends a face to the greatest humanitarian issue of our time, the Syrian refugee crisis.For millions around the globe, sixteen-year-old Nujeen Musta
It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War
Lynsey Addario · 368 pages
War photographer Lynsey Addario's memoir It's What I Do is the story of how the relentless pursuit of truth, in virtually every major theater of war in the twenty-first century, has shaped her life. What she does, with clarity, beauty, and candor, is to document, often in their most extreme moments, the complex lives of others. It's her work, but it's much more than that: it's her singular calling
Curfewed Night
Basharat Peer · 234 pages
Curfewed Night is a brave and unforgettable piece of literary reporting that reveals the personal stories behind one of the most brutal conflicts in modern times. Since 1989, when the separatist movement exploded, more than seventy thousand people have been killed in the battle between India and Pakistan over Kashmir. Born and raised in the war-torn region, Basharat Peer brings this little-known p
Smile
Raina Telgemeier · 213 pages
Survival in Auschwitz
Primo Levi · 157 pages
In 1943, Primo Levi, a 25-year-old chemist and "Italian citizen of Jewish race," was arrested by Italian fascists and deported from his native Turin to Auschwitz. This is Levi's classic account of his ten months in the German death camp, a harrowing story of systematic cruelty and miraculous endurance. Remarkable for its simplicity, restraint, compassion, and even wit, Survival in Auschwitz remain
In My Father's Country: An Afghan Woman Defies Her Fate
Saima Wahab · 346 pages
Relates the author's decision, years after her father was taken away by the KGB, to relocate to her uncle's home in America, where she pursued an education and worked as an interpreter before becoming a cultural adviser for the U.S. Army.
Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10
Marcus Luttrell · 390 pages
On a clear night in late June 2005, four U.S. Navy SEALs left their base in northern Afghanistan for the mountainous Pakistani border. Their mission was to capture or kill a notorious al Qaeda leader known to be ensconced in a Taliban stronghold surrounded by a small but heavily armed force. Less then twenty-four hours later, only one of those Navy SEALs remained alive. This is the story of fire t
Wave
Sonali Deraniyagala · 227 pages
On the morning of December 26, 2004, on the southern coast of Sri Lanka, Sonali Deraniyagala lost her parents, her husband, and her two young sons in the tsunami she miraculously survived. In this brave and searingly frank memoir, she describes those first horrifying moments and her long journey since. She has written an engrossing, unsentimental, beautifully poised account: as she struggles throu
Zeitoun
Dave Eggers · 352 pages
From Goodreads: The true story of one family, caught between America’s two biggest policy disasters: the war on terror and the response to Hurricane Katrina. Abdulrahman and Kathy Zeitoun run a house-painting business in New Orleans. In August of 2005, as Hurricane Katrina approaches, Kathy evacuates with their four young children, leaving Zeitoun to watch over the business. In the days followi
My War Gone By, I Miss It So
Anthony Loyd · 334 pages
Nothing can prepare you for Anthony Loyd 's portrait of war. It is the story of the unspeakable terror and the visceral, ecstatic thrill of combat, and the lives and dreams laid to waste by the bloodiest conflict that Europe has witnessed since the Second World War. Born into a distinguished military family, Loyd was raised on the stories of his ancestors' exploits and grew up fascinated with war.
By the Iowa Sea: A Memoir of Disaster and Love
Joe Blair · 280 pages
Recounts the author's transformation from an idealistic, freedom-loving youth to a jaded and financially struggling father of four and how a catastrophic flood helped him to reconnect with the faith and courage of his childhood.
Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago
Eric Klinenberg · 312 pages
A “social autopsy” (Klinenberg’s phrase) of Chicago’s citizens and institutions after the July 1995 heat wave that killed over 700 people.
Guantánamo Diary
Mohamedou Ould Slahi · 448 pages
"This is the first and only diary written by a still-imprisoned Guantánamo detainee. Since 2002, Mohamedou Slahi has been imprisoned at the detainee camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. In all these years, the United States has never charged him with a crime. Although he was ordered released by a federal judge, the U.S. government fought that decision, and there is no sign that the United States plans to
33 Men
Jonathan Franklin · 308 pages
This is the account of the 2010 San Jose mine rescue in Chile, after one of the longest human entrapments in history. With his coveted "rescue pass," journalist Jonathan Franklin, who had lived 15 years in Chile, was permitted access far past the police perimeter. The miners were discovered alive 17 days after the collapse, but it took another 52 days before they were all rescued. For eight weeks,
Angela's Ashes
Frank McCourt · 384 pages
"When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood." So begins the luminous memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish im
See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism
Robert B. Baer · 306 pages
Julian Assange: The Unauthorised Autobiography
Julian Assange · 339 pages
Most people reading this review will know the sordid story of how "Julian Assange: The Unauthorized Autobiography" came to be published against the wishes of its subject and copyright holder Julian Assange and its author, Assange's ghostwriter, the Scottish novelist Andrew O'Hagan. Predictably, Canongate's explanatory note at the beginning of the book omits salient details. Julian Assange signed a
Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching: A Young Black Man's Education
Mychal Denzel Smith · 240 pages
"A prominent journalist and contributing writer to The Nation magazine describes his education and the experiences of black masculinity against a backdrop of the Obama administration, the death of Trayvon Martin, the career of LeBron James and other pivotal influences that have shaped race relations in today's America,"--NoveList. How do you learn to be a black man in America? For young black men