A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier
by Ishmael Beah
Forced into living the life of a killer at age 12 in the broken land that was his home, to graduating from Oberlin college at age 17, Ishmael Beah, now 25, has had the experiences of two lifetimes. Around the world, children are kidnapped, drugged, and forced to fight in civil wars-current estimates place the number at 300,000. Beah's story is one from somebody who lived to tell the tale.

Here If You Need Me: A True Story
by Kate Braestrup
Every once in awhile, a story is told with such unflinching honesty and bittersweet wisdom that you're inspired to laugh at yourself a little bit more and to really look at the big picture. Kate Braestrup's memoir of her path following the tragic death of her husband to her eventual ordainment as a minister is just one of those books.

My Father's Secret War
by Lucinda Franks
In My Father's Secret War, Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Lucinda Franks recalls how she discovered that her estranged father had been a spy during World War II. Following years of resentment towards him over his distant behavior and alcoholism, Franks reconnects with him after he is diagnosed with Alzheimer's and learns about a side of her father that she never knew.

Prisoner of Tehran
by Marina Nemat
In 1982, Marina Nemat, a 16-year-old Christian girl living under the Ayatollah's oppressive regime, was tortured and sentenced to death for a minor infraction. While in prison, a Muslim guard intervened and took her as his bride. Years later, she recounts her horrific tale of being a political prisoner during Iran's revolution.

Sick Girl
by Amy Silverstein
When Amy Silverstein was 25 years old, she contracted a virus and received a heart transplant. Seventeen years later, she talks about what it's like to live with a donor heart while desperately trying to hide your illness from the rest of the world—and feeling embittered when nobody seems to understand how sick you really are.

WINNER
When a Crocodile Eats the Sun: A Memoir of Africa
by Peter Godwin
A simultaneous history of his homeland's decline and his own father's failing health, journalist Peter Godwin writes a haunting memoir of his return to Zimbabwe during Robert Mugabe's oppressive rule. As he digs into the country's past, he is also confronted with truths that force him to examine his own identity as a dispossessed white African.