10 New Memoirs and Biographies to Read This Fall

The Grammy-winning singer-songwriter with a five-octave vocal range has lately been celebrating her 30 years of success with #MC30 on social media, releasing remixes of her tunes and reminiscing for her 21.5 million fans on Twitter. Now comes her memoir, which Carey describes as “my memories, my mishaps, my struggles, my survival and my songs. Unfiltered.” Audible's audiobook version is narrated by Carey and interwoven with her music.

Sept. 29, Henry Holt & Co.

Hollywood

No Time Like the Future: An Optimist Considers Mortality

Michael J. Fox

Some 35 years since the actor first played time-traveling Marty McFly in Back to the Future, Fox, 59, writes about the health challenges he's faced since his Parkinson's disease diagnosis at age 29, as well as his thoughts on aging and mortality. Following two previous memoirs, Lucky Man and Always Looking Up, this book doesn't shy from his feelings of despair ("I've been pelted with too many lemons to even think about lemonade"), but Fox tempers that with the appealing humor, gratitude and optimism that's brought him so many admirers through the years.

Nov. 17, Flatiron

Cary Grant: A Brilliant Disguise

Scott Eyman

The actor's screen name is synonymous with effortless charm and confidence, as well as a string of Golden Age Hollywood classics, from His Girl Friday to Notorious. But behind that charisma lurked loads of anxiety and insecurity (not to mention the birth name Archibald Alexander Leach) — an emotional mix that was “a perfectly natural response to his experience of life.” That's according to the film historian author, who describes Grant's struggles growing up with an alcoholic father and a difficult, smothering mother. This epic, fact-packed biography also offers plenty on Grant's romantic life: The star dallied with both sexes and married five times. But he remained ever devoted to his daughter with actress Dyan Cannon, Jennifer, until he died in 1986 at age 82.

Oct. 20, Simon & Schuster

Politics

His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, A Life

Jonathan Alter

Alter had decades of access to the Carter family while researching this first comprehensive biography of Jimmy Carter, 96, our unlikely 39th president — a man who grew up as a little kid nicknamed “Peewee” on a farm without running water or electricity. Carter's presidency was troubled, including the Iran hostage situation and an economic crisis. But, Alter makes clear, his long life has been marked by good deeds, from his work for international peace that led to a Nobel Peace Prize and work with Habitat for Humanity to teaching Sunday school into his 90s and decades-long devotion to his wife, Roslyn. Politics aside, it's an engrossing story about a truly decent man.

Sept. 29, Simon & Schuster

The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X

Les and Tamara Payne

Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Les Payne spent more than 30 years talking to everyone who'd known the former Nation of Islam spokesman and civil rights icon, including FBI moles, anyone still alive from Malcolm X's family, political leaders, and even the two men convicted of his 1965 murder who may have been wrongly accused. The resulting biography (completed by Payne's daughter, Tamara, after the author's 2018 death at age 76) includes new details on Malcolm's youth, when white neighbors set fire to the young family's home in Lansing, Michigan, and his father was run over by a streetcar. “It was as if some curse of Shakespearean proportion had befallen this American family,” the authors note. It's a fascinating, historically essential story that gets at the man behind the mythology and controversy.

Sept. 29, Liveright

Eleanor

David Michaelis

This probing, detailed biography dissects the remarkable life of Eleanor Roosevelt, including her difficult childhood with troubled parents that Michaelis presents with vivid detail: “One or the other was always pouting in a dark room, injustice hanging its sulky cloud in the hallways, meals on trays creaking with reproachful indignation upstairs.” Her mother was soon lost to diphtheria, her father to alcohol; the family's privilege offered no protection from heartache. Michaelis goes on to explore her groundbreaking roles as first lady and human rights warrior, as well as her complicated romantic relationships with husband Franklin and others.

Oct. 6, Simon & Schuster

And more…

Once I Was You: A Memoir of Love and Hate in a Torn America

María Hinojosa

Hinojosa, 59, the Mexican American host of NPR's Latino USA, has penned an inspiring, deeply personal exploration of the immigrant story that reads like an ambivalent love letter to a sometimes painfully hostile America. She describes her father's long-ago arrival in Texas (where he's baffled by bathroom doors labeled “White” and “Colored"), on his way to take a research job at the University of Chicago, and her own entry in 1962, when she was “marked as a ‘dirty Mexican.'” She also discusses her upbringing on the South Side of Chicago and sexual assault at age 16. Hinojosa turned to meditation and spirituality to heal herself, then went on to become award-winning reporter who's covered the immigration crisis at the U.S. border and is devoted to giving voice to the many who have none.

Sept. 15, Atria

Eat a Peach: A Memoir

David Chang

Korean American chef and the star of Netflix's Ugly Delicious, Chang dishes out an outrageously entertaining memoir about his improbable ascent to culinary fame. He started out angry, depressed, and given to manic episodes and suicidal thoughts, and initially, he admits, not such a great cook. But he nonetheless managed to tap, as he puts it, “a reserve of sheer, stubborn willpower to make up for what I lacked in talent.” Armed with that wild ambition and a bad-boy persona — he's often described as a “rebel chef” — Chang opened his first noodle shop in New York City's East Village. His mission: to make casual Asian cuisine as popular in America as french fries.

Sept. 8, Clarkson Potter

More big biographies and memoirs out this year:

• His Truth Is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope, by Jon Meacham (Aug. 25)
• JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century, by Fredrik Logevall (Sept. 8)
• Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times, by David S. Reynolds (Sept. 29)
• Let Love Rule, by Lenny Kravitz with David Ortiz (Oct. 6)
• Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath, by Heather Clark (Oct. 13)
• Mad at the World: A Life of John Steinbeck, by William Souder (Oct. 13)
• Greenlights, a memoir by Matthew McConaughey (Oct. 20)
• The Search for John Lennon: The Life, Loves and Death of a Rock Star, by Lesley-Ann Jones (Dec. 1)