Open: An Autobiography
Andre Agassi's 2009 memoir, written with Pulitzer-winning journalist J.R. Moehringer, in which he admits he hated tennis for much of his career. It's my favorite answer to anyone who asks what a ghostwriter is for.
Tag: Book Reviews
Handling reviews as an author: getting them, reading them, surviving the bad ones, and what criticism versus critique actually means.
Book ReviewsLife
Keith Richards's memoir of the Rolling Stones, written with journalist James Fox after years of interviews. It debuted at number one on the New York Times list and won the Norman Mailer Prize for biography.
Book ReviewsDid I Ever Tell You This?: A Memoir
Sam Neill's memoir, written in a burst in 2022 while he was being treated for blood cancer. It's funny, gossipy and self-deprecating, and it's how he told the world he was ill.
Book ReviewsLove’s Executioner and Other Tales of Psychotherapy
Irvin Yalom's 1989 collection of ten case stories from his psychotherapy practice. It reads like short fiction, it's unusually honest about the therapist's own mistakes, and it's the book I point clinicians to when they ask how to write about…
Book ReviewsDesigning Casinos to Dominate the Competition
Bill Friedman's 2000 textbook on casino layout, built from years of studying how players move through Nevada casinos. It's where the maze floor, the low ceilings and the missing clocks got their rationale.
Book ReviewsThe Library Book
Susan Orlean's 2018 account of the 1986 fire that destroyed 400,000 books at the Los Angeles Central Library, the man accused of setting it, and the long history of the library itself. It's a mystery, a history and a love…
Book ReviewsThe Phone Book: The Curious History of the Book That Everyone Uses But No One Reads
Ammon Shea's 2010 history of the telephone directory, from a fifty-name list in 1878 to the doorstop that landed on every porch. It's short, funny and full of things nobody thought to ask about the phone book.
Book ReviewsTrump: The Art of the Deal
Donald Trump's 1987 business memoir, written with journalist Tony Schwartz. It spent 13 weeks at number one on the New York Times list and did more to build a public image than any real estate deal could. It's also a…
Book ReviewsTime for a Turning Point
Charlie Kirk's first book, written with Brent Hamachek during the 2016 campaign and published that October, four years after he founded Turning Point USA at eighteen. It makes his case for free markets and limited government to young readers.
Book ReviewsCampus Battlefield
Charlie Kirk's 2018 book on conservative students and American universities, with a foreword by Donald Trump Jr. It describes the campus activism Turning Point USA was built on and defends the organization's Professor Watchlist.
Book ReviewsThe MAGA Doctrine
Charlie Kirk's 2020 book presenting Donald Trump's agenda as a coherent political philosophy. Broadside Books, a HarperCollins imprint, published it in March of the election year, and it debuted at number five on the New York Times nonfiction list.
Book ReviewsThe College Scam
Charlie Kirk's 2022 book arguing that a four-year degree costs too much and delivers too little for many students. It's built as a ten-count indictment of higher education, followed by the alternatives he recommended, from apprenticeships to starting a business.