Southern

All Over But the Shoutin’ by Rick Bragg

Ava’s Man by Rick Bragg

An Hour Before Daylight: Memoirs of a Rural Boyhood by Jimmy Carter

One Writer’s Beginnings by Eudora Welty

My Losing Season by Pat Conroy

Legal/Crime

Dead Man Walking by Helen Prejean

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

Adventure & Travel

Into Thin Air by John Krakauer

Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck

Blue Highway: Journey into America by William Least Heat-Moon

Contemporary

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers

Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (P.S.) by Barbara Kingsolver

Childhood in America

American Childhood by Annie Dillard

Growing Up by Russell Baker

African American

Dust Tracks on a Road by Zora Neale Hurston

A Song Flung Up to Heaven by Maya Angelou

Black Boy by Richard Wright

Nature & Animals

Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard

Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey

A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold

All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot

Chinese American

The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girl Among Ghosts by Maxine Hong Kingston

Irish American

Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt

Japanese American

Volcano: A Memoir of Hawaii by Garrett Hongo

Native American

The Way to Rainy Mountain by Scott Momaday

Vietnam War

If I Die in a Combat Zone by Tim O’Brien

Puerto Rican

When I was Puerto Rican by Esmeralda Santiago

Silent Dancing: A Partial Remembrance of a Puerto Rican Childhood by Judith Ortiz Cofer

South American

The Sum of Our Days by Isabel Allende

South African

Kaffir Boy by Mark Mathabane

Political

Faith of My Fathers by John McCain

Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama

Religious

The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible by A.J. Jacobs