#memoir

#memoir

From Soundgarden's humble beginnings manifesting grunge in Seattle's beer-soaked punk clubs to their revered status today as rock icons, the band's journey has been nothing short of extraordinary. In A Screaming Life, founding member and guitar god Kim Thayil goes backstage to introduce the band that fearlessly pushed the boundaries of rock, invented a new genre, and amassed fervent fans from every corner of the world.

Palestinian writer Atef Abu Saif could hardly hide his outrage. The Israeli military had destroyed not just buildings, but an entire culture, he told DW. He wants to use the medium of writing to save whatever is still salvageable. But what can you save in a war-torn wasteland? All that remains are memories, the author says. Saif is among the best-known Palestinian writers, his reputation derived in part from the fact that he served as the Palestinian Authority's Minister for Culture from 2019 to 2024,

Christine Brown Woolley grew up in Utah with a dad and two moms, in a polygamist community called the Apostolic United Brethren. When she became an adult, she joined a polygamist marriage as a third wife, helped raise more than a dozen kids, and became co-star of the TLC reality show Sister Wives. Fast forward to 2025, and she has left her marriage and her polygamist faith.

"I did think it was risky and indeed it was," Curry said when asked about taking on the role half a century ago. "But I like risky. I would choose risky over anything. That's the best way to be," the actor added.

Growing up, I'd lie to my diary to just make my life seem more entertaining. I lied about having horses, [living] in a big mansion, and that I was on American Idol,

There isn't a soul on the streets of Chelsea on a Sunday in summer. The residents of this New York neighborhood once an industrial area in lower Manhattan, now transformed into a haven for bohemian bourgeois have abandoned their luxurious lofts overlooking the High Line to retreat to their beach houses in the Hamptons.

FBI agent Scott Payne served 28 years in law enforcement, including going undercover in violent neo-Nazi cells, the Ku Klux Klan, and outlaw motorcycle gangs.

'The others are about a specific artist or the history of curating ... [My French publisher Seuil] felt it might be of interest to do a personal book but there was never the time. At least at the beginning of lockdown, before all the Zoom calls started, there was a bit of time! The death of my mother was also an important aspect.'

"And I remember standing inside the house looking through the window as my stepdad pulls my mom in for a slow dance," Ronson says. "And I just stood there watching the scene, slightly drunk off this feeling of like, 'Oh my God, this is my music playing out there.' But also it was ... like the first time in my life I genuinely have a memory of having done something right."

I think I have an ear for writing for women because I have a very vocal grandmother, mother, and sister. I was a young actor. I started officially at the age of seven and a half. And one of my first teachers said, "Just listen to other people and observe and watch people. Go to a mall, watch people." Well, I went to malls, I went to my living room, I went to my dining room table,

"filled with intimate evenings of storytelling, behind-the-scenes anecdotes, and the music that shaped his life,"

Wild Swans, first published in 1991 and written by Jung Chang with the help of her husband, Irish-born historian and writer Jon Halliday, had a global impact few authors dare to dream of. It told the story of three generations of women in 20th-century China Chang's grandmother, her mother and herself and became one of the most popular nonfiction books in history, selling more than 13m copies in 37 languages and collecting a fistful of awards and commendations.

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. Nonfiction books sometimes get a reputation for being hard to slog through. But the qualities that make good novels so enjoyable-the well-paced plot, the engaging characters-can also be found in many of their fact-based counterparts. The Atlantic 's writers and editors answer the question: What is a nonfiction book that reads like fiction?

Country star Ty Herndon rose to fame in the music industry in 1995, when his single "What Mattered Most" skyrocketed to the top of the charts. Since then, he's released 16 more Billboard charting hits. Now, three decades later, Herndon is releasing his memoir, "What Mattered Most," where he offers an honest reflection of his unprecedented career in the spotlight and the personal battles he's faced behind the scenes.

To 2049 by American poet Jorie Graham is one of my favourite collections of recent times and rereading it recently was incredibly rewarding. Filled with slippery and existentially evocative lines such as Years pulled their / lengths through us like long wet strings, it had me pointing at some of the pages gasping: I wish I wrote this! (a condition I frequently suffer from, known as poem-envy).

Blame George Orwell, who in 1946 famously published "Why I Write," an essay contending with the motives of "political purpose" and "aesthetic enthusiasm," which fueled his career, even while noting that the decision to put pen to paper is in some ways inexplicable. "Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness," Orwell wrote.

As a young Taiwanese girl living in the Inland Empire, former singer and import model-turned-writer Kaila Yu said she often felt uncomfortable in her skin, growing up around Eurocentric beauty standards. I felt like my features weren't desirable, Yu said of her childhood. I felt very insecure about all of that. The now 46-year-old L.A.-based author explores themes of sexuality and race in her debut memoir, Fetishized: A Reckoning with Yellow Fever, Feminism, and Beauty, out everywhere books are sold.

Cher's early life was marked by poverty and abuse, but those hardships didn't prevent her from finding stardom in the 1960s.

"I realised that there would be people who had never met a single openly queer person in their life, reading this alongside people who would probably already feel quite shocked by all of the other revelations and my journey with gender identity."

Resilience to me is not about the absence of struggle; it's having the audacity to dream beyond it.

Garten never wanted to be a TV star, telling Food Network no more than once, but a mishap with her septic system made her reconsider participating in television cooking.

In Grant's telling, postal workers bring order and predictability to a country that can feel like it's unraveling, especially during crises that starkly illustrate how reliant we are on the federal bureaucracy.