Why I Left the Amish

Educated: A Memoir

Tara Westover · 353 pages

Choose the good -- The midwife -- Cream shoes -- Apache women -- Honest dirt -- Shield and buckler -- The Lord will provide -- Tiny harlots -- Perfect in his generations -- Shield of feathers -- Instinct -- Fish eyes -- Silence in the churches -- My feet no longer touch Earth -- No more a child -- Disloyal man, disobedient heaven -- To keep it holy -- Blood and feathers -- In the beginning -- Reci

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

Foreskin's Lament

Shalom Auslander · 310 pages

Shalom Auslander was raised with a terrified respect for God. Even as he grew up and was estranged from his community, his religion and its traditions, he could not find his way to a life where he didn't struggle against God daily.Foreskin's Lament reveals Auslander's youth in a strict, socially isolated Orthodox community, and recounts his rebellion and efforts to make a new life apart from it. A

Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots

Deborah Feldman · 272 pages

Traces the author's upbringing in a Hasidic community in Brooklyn, describing the strict rules that governed her life, arranged marriage at the age of seventeen, and the birth of her son, which led to her plan to leave and forge her own path in life.

All Rivers Run to the Sea: Memoir

Elie Wiesel · 432 pages

The Glass Castle

Jeannette Walls · 296 pages

A story about the early life of Jeannette Walls. The memoir is an exposing work about her early life and growing up on the run and often homeless. It presents a different perspective of life from all over the United States and the struggle a girl had to find normalcy as she grew into an adult.

Uncovered: How I Left Hasidic Life and Finally Came Home

Leah Lax · 348 pages

In Uncovered, Leah Lax tells her story--beginning as a young teen who left her liberal, secular home for life as a Hasidic Jew and ending as a forty-something woman who has to abandon the only world she's known for thirty years in order to achieve personal freedom. In understated, crystalline prose, Lax details her experiences with arranged marriage, fundamentalist faith, and motherhood during her

Cut Me Loose: Sin and Salvation After My Ultra-Orthodox Girlhood

Leah Vincent · 226 pages

Recounts the author's experiences after her fundamentalist Jewish family cut her off at the age of sixteen for exchanging letters with a male friend, tracing her downward spiral into promiscuity and self-destruction in New York City. She is now working to help other formerly ultra-Orthodox individuals.

Banished: Surviving My Years in the Westboro Baptist Church

Lauren Drain · 300 pages

"In the tradition of Escape and Stolen innocence, the first look behind the curtains of the Westboro Baptist Church, by a young woman cast out from its clutches"--Provided by the publisher. Lauren Drain's childhood seemed average American, but when her liberal-minded father set out to film a documentary about the audacious and cultish hate group, the Westboro Baptist Church, he found himself se

Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter

Simone de Beauvoir · 368 pages

A superb autobiography by one of the great literary figures of the twentieth century, Simone de Beauvoir's Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter offers an intimate picture of growing up in a bourgeois French family, rebelling as an adolescent against the conventional expectations of her class, and striking out on her own with an intellectual and existential ambition exceedingly rare in a young woman in th

Secret Ceremonies: A Mormon Woman's Intimate Diary of Marriage and Beyond

Deborah Laake · 240 pages

In this book, Deborah Laake, a former member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, chronicles her experiences with Mormonism and the various rituals performed in their temples. Laake recounts her studies at the Brigham Young University, her loveless first marriage at nineteen, her subsequent divorce and the problems she encountered with the Mormon authorities and her relatives due to

The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Malcolm X, Alex Haley · 484 pages

The Book of Mormon Girl: Stories from an American Faith

Joanna Brooks · 209 pages

Story about leaving behind the innocence of childhood belief and embracing the complications and heartbreaks that come to every adult life of faith. Explores the author's journey through her faith, and the experience of being a Mormon.

Devoted

Jennifer Mathieu · 336 pages

The Road to Mecca

Muhammad Asad · 380 pages

This autobiographical work by one of Europe's best known convert to Islam gives us a rounded portrait of a man in search of adventure and truth. It is part spiritual autobiography, part summary of the author's intuitive insights into Islam and the Arabs, part an impressive travelogue. Punctuated with abundant adventure, moments of contemplation, colorful narrative, brilliant description and lively

Boy Erased: A Memoir

Garrard Conley · 352 pages

Girl Meets God

Lauren F. Winner · 316 pages

"Like most of us, Lauren Winner wants something to believe in. The child of a Reform Jewish father and a lapsed Southern Baptist mother, she chose to become an Orthodox Jew. But as she faithfully observes the Sabbath rituals and studies Jewish laws, she finds herself increasingly drawn to Christianity. So, taking a courageous step, she leaves behind what she loves, and converts. Now the even harde

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

Confession of a Buddhist Atheist

Stephen Batchelor · 320 pages

All Who Go Do Not Return: A Memoir

Shulem Deen · 299 pages

Shulem Deen was raised to believe that questions are dangerous. As a member of the Skverers, one of the most insular Hasidic sects in the US, he knows little about the outside world--only that it is to be shunned. His marriage at eighteen is arranged and several children soon follow. Deen's first transgression--turning on the radio--is small, but his curiosity leads him to the library, and later t

The Book of Margery Kempe

Margery Kempe · 343 pages

"Margery Kempe's autobiography engages the modern reader with its richly textured images of late-medieval England - its town life, customs, means of travel, dress, food, and, most notably, its observations of the religious rituals that prevailed in the author's lifetime (ca. 1373-ca. 1440). Lynn Staley's new translation does not modernize; rather, it stays as close to the original Middle English a

Infidel

Ayaan Hirsi Ali · 353 pages

"Ultimately a celebration of triumph over adversity, Hirsi Ali's story tells how a bright little girl evolved out of dutiful obedience to become an outspoken, pioneering freedom fighter. As Western governments struggle to balance democratic ideals with religious pressures, no story could be timelier or more significant.--From publisher description."--From source other than the Library of Congress

Unveiling Grace: The Story of How We Found Our Way out of the Mormon Church

Lynn K. Wilder · 368 pages

Narrates the story of how a Mormon family left the religion after questioning many of its teachings and describes what it was like to grow up as a Mormon, comparing many Mormon beliefs and practices with those of more traditional Christian religions.

Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America's Leading Atheists

Dan Barker

After 19 years as an evangelical preacher, missionary, and Christian songwriter, Dan Barker 'threw out the bathwater and discovered there is no baby there.' Barker, who is now co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation (America's largest organization of atheists and agnostics), describes the intellectual and psychological path he followed in moving from fundamentalism to freethought. The