Biography & Memoir

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews the new memoir by Dani Shapiro; it's her third memoir and it's about marriage. Her first two were best sellers.

Former Obama staffer Alyssa Mastromonaco is well acquainted with the privilege — and sleeplessness — of working in the White House: "I basically ran on adrenaline, almost, for six years," she says.

New Yorker staff writer Elif Batuman's new novel, The Idiot, follows a young woman's first year at Harvard University, and how she finds love through email.

Jay Bakker is the son of televangelists Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker. In 1989 his father, Jimmy, was convicted of defrauding his followers at the Praise The Lord ministry, and sent to prison. Then his parents divorced. Bakker was 13 years old at the time. In his new memoir, Son of a Preacher Man: My Search for Grace in the Shadows, (Harper), he writes of returning to faith after a long period of alcoholism and disillusionment. Jay Bakker now heads his own ministry, Revolution, in Atlanta, ministering to skateboarders, punk rockers, and hippies, and other neglected kids.

Buck's new memoir details his experiences in sports and life, including his addiction to hair-plug transplants. When it comes to announcing, he says, "I don't have a rooting interest for either side."

Trevor Noah talks about growing up in Apartheid-era South Africa. His mother was black; his father white, and at the time Noah was born it was illegal for such couples to have intimate relations. His memoir is titled Born a Crime.

Lorraine Bracco's character on HBO's The Sopranos has the unenviable job of psychoanalyzing mob boss Tony Soprano. Bracco's career has plenty of mob connections: She received an Academy Award nomination for her performance in Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas. Now she has written a memoir, On the Couch.

Woodson won the National Book Award for young people's literature in 2014 for her memoir Brown Girl Dreaming, and is a finalist for another NBA this year. Originally broadcast Dec. 20, 2014.

Patti Niemi has been a percussionist for the San Francisco Opera Orchestra since 1992. She speaks with Fresh Air's Sam Briger about performance anxiety, muscle memory and her memoir, Sticking it Out.

As the wife of a Navy fighter pilot, memoirist Rachel Starnes has had much of her life — including where she lives and how often she gets to live with her husband — determined by his career.

Robert F. Kennedy is often remembered as a liberal icon who worked to heal racial strife, decrease poverty and end the war in Vietnam. But early in his career, biographer Larry Tye notes, Kennedy was a hard-edged anti-communist who worked for red-baiting Sen. Joe McCarthy, authorized the wiretapping of Martin Luther King Jr. and supported American intervention in Vietnam. Tye chronicles Kennedy's transformation.

After starring in Broadway shows like The Music Man and Candide, Cook struggled with addiction, then staged a successful second career as a cabaret singer. Her new memoir is Then and Now.

In Susan Faludi's new memoir In The Darkroom she investigates the enigma that always has been her father, and considers the various strains of gender, ethnicity, religion and family that, perhaps, go into making someone who they are.

Writer Claire Hoffman describes her childhood living in a community devoted to Transcendental Meditation. She was meditating at the age of 3.

While serving as a State Department adviser in Iraq and Afghanistan, J. Kael Weston instigated a military mission that resulted the death of 31 service members. His memoir revisits the tragedy of war.

In his new memoir, Under The Big Black Sun: A Personal History Of L.A. Punk, John Doe of the band X brings together his own essays and stories from other musicians and scene-makers of that time. A conversation with Doe, with his bandmate Exene Cervenka, and with Dave Alvin of the Blasters who played with X for a short time.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews the new memoir The Bridge Ladies by middle-aged baby boomer Betsy Lerner who invites herself into her mother's long-running bridge game as a way of trying to understand a generation that still seems to play its cards too close to its chest.

"When I'm acting, I always imagine myself as looking totally different than the person that appears onscreen," Black says. The comedian writes about family, masculinity and vanity in his new memoir.