The Best Bios & Memoirs of 2025

The Swerve author traces the audacious rise and violent fall of Shakespeare’s greatest rival in this vibrant literary biography. From erotic Latin translations to Doctor Faustus, Marlowe’s dazzling imagination and radical ideas helped shape modern thought. “Greenblatt excels at immersing the reader in that time and place,” wrote Booklist, praising the book’s “thriller-like pacing” and rich detail.

Susana M. Morris traces Butler’s life through the civil rights movement, Black feminism, and the rise of climate and gender politics revealing how her fiction imagined radical futures with Black women at the center. Drawing on archival material and Butler’s own reflections, this is a study of a writer who could not stop asking dangerous questions.

This richly immersive account explores how Baldwin’s intimate artistic partnerships shaped his life and work, from Harlem to Istanbul, Paris to the South of France. Based on newly uncovered archival material and original interviews, it is a “dynamic portrait that deepens our understanding of a complex artist,” according to a starred review from Kirkus

From fake news to ecstatic truth, Herzog interrogates what truth really means in our digital, deepfaked age. Blending memoir, philosophy, and his singular voice, this compact book is both a warning and a wonder.

Robert B. Reich, the former U.S. Secretary of Labor and longtime public voice on inequality, reflects on six decades of political life—from the civil rights movement to the Clinton White House. He examines what his generation got wrong about democracy and capitalism, and what must still be done. The memoir reached #1 on the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list—“a lifetime dream,” Reich wrote.

In her first memoir, the Booker Prize–winning author of The God of Small Things honors the life and legacy of her mother, Mary Roy, a pioneering educator and activist. Written in the wake of her mother’s death, Roy’s book is both intimate and political—an exploration of thorny love, freedom, and the making of a writer.

Susan Orlean has profiled everything from orchid thieves to bullfighters to librarians to a 10-year-old boy with a pet ferret. In Joyride, the bestselling author of The Orchid Thief and The Library Book traces her evolution as a journalist and storyteller—from her early days at alt-weeklies to decades at The New Yorker to Hollywood adaptations of her work. She writes candidly about deadlines and dead ends motherhood and reinvention writer’s block and obsession and the joy of paying very close attention to the world. “An ebullient frank moving and inspiring memoir” says Booklist.

The acclaimed biographer behind several works, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington: A Life, presents a comprehensive portrait of America’s first literary celebrity. Born Samuel Clemens, Twain’s journey from steamboat pilot to satirical writer and political pundit is explored in depth. "Essential reading for any Twain buff and student of American literature," praised Kirkus in a starred review.

In her first memoir, the author made famous by her extraordinarily crafted dystopian stories, turns her gaze inward. Book of Lives traces her unconventional childhood in the Canadian wilderness, her formative years spent abroad, and the intellectual and political battles that shaped novels like The Handmaid’s Tale. Atwood is now 85, a two-time Booker Prize winner and cultural icon whose work has shaped how entire generations think about power and gender.

This memoir provides a firsthand look at one of the world’s most influential companies, from private jet trips and political dealings to the toxic culture behind closed doors. It details the unchecked power of tech leaders, the impact of social media on global events, and the personal cost of working in a high-stakes corporate environment.