{"id":3897,"date":"2025-04-15T22:41:07","date_gmt":"2025-04-15T22:41:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2025\/04\/15\/2025s-best-memoirs-and-biographies-from-abba-to-yoko-ono\/"},"modified":"2025-04-15T22:41:10","modified_gmt":"2025-04-15T22:41:10","slug":"2025s-best-memoirs-and-biographies-from-abba-to-yoko-ono","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2025\/04\/15\/2025s-best-memoirs-and-biographies-from-abba-to-yoko-ono\/","title":{"rendered":"2025\u2019s Best Memoirs and Biographies, From ABBA to Yoko Ono"},"content":{"rendered":"
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These life stories deserve space in your reading pile. Courtesy the publishers<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This year brings with it many exciting big-ticket book releases, ranging from the discovered diaries of a literary titan to the hotly awaited memoir of a major star. We\u2019ve surveyed the publishing calendar and picked the must-read life stories of 2025\u2014a list that encompasses both biography and memoir.<\/p>\n

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There are fascinating portraits of two nonagenarians\u2014artist Yoko Ono<\/a> and Golden Age star Vera Miles<\/a>, both still living\u2014plus memoirs from formidable writers on their fraught relationships with their mothers. Legends of music, including Cher<\/a> and ABBA, also feature in intimate new books mapping the contours of their fabled careers in the spotlight.<\/p>\n

If you find comfort or inspiration in reading about the lives of others\u2014whether you prefer stories that reveal the secrets of success or tales of resilience in the face of great obstacles\u2014you\u2019ll find these 2025 memoirs and biographies worthy of your time.<\/p>\n

Yoko: A Biography<\/i><\/b> by David Sheff<\/b><\/h3>\n
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Yoko: A Biography<\/em>. Courtesy Simon and Schuster<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After decades of public mistreatment, Ono has only recently received the recognition and acknowledgment deserving of such a forceful artist. In Yoko<\/i>, David Sheff<\/a> makes it his project to challenge Ono\u2019s popular image as a \u201cfraud \u2026 who broke up the greatest band in history.\u201d The ensuing tome is a generous and humanizing portrait that draws on Sheff\u2019s own extensive experience interviewing Ono and John Lennon<\/a>. Ono\u2019s art practice is given equal redemption here, as Sheff underscores the potency of her early feminist artworks and performances once caused in America.<\/p>\n

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SEE ALSO: <\/i><\/b>A Tate Modern Retrospective Is Reclaiming Yoko Ono<\/i><\/b><\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Vera Miles: The Hitchcock Blonde Who Got Away <\/i><\/b>by Christopher McKittrick<\/b><\/h3>\n
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Vera Miles: The Hitchcock Blonde Who Got Away<\/em>. Courtesy University of Kentucky Press<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A survivor of both the slasher movie Psycho<\/i> and old Hollywood, actress Vera Miles gets the corrective treatment in a new detailed biography. Vera Miles <\/i>clears up some of the confusion about the famous blonde from The Wrong Man<\/i>, stressing she largely had a harmonious relationship with Alfred Hitchcock<\/a> and ultimately didn\u2019t court more movie roles because of her decision to focus on family. The 95-year-old may not have contributed to this book, but its author does give Miles overdue credit for her 50-year career in memorable films like The Searchers<\/i> and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance<\/i>. A cinephile\u2019s delight.<\/p>\n

Notes to John <\/i><\/b>by Joan Didion<\/b><\/h3>\n
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Notes to John<\/em>. Courtesy Knopf<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Didion, one of America\u2019s foremost journalists and observers of life, kept a diary in 1999 for just that year. Prompted by her psychiatrist\u2019s encouragement, she began recording entries on her mental health struggles, difficulties with daughter Quintana<\/a> and musings on her legacy and reputation (or \u201cwhat it\u2019s been worth\u201d). Although only forty or so entries long, the slim volume Notes to John <\/i>promises to give readers unedited and raw access to the elusive journalist. It shows the mythologized author grappling with everyday issues of grief and private anguish, with Didion never as unscripted as these late personal admissions promise to reveal.<\/p>\n

Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin <\/i><\/b>by Sue Prideaux<\/b><\/h3>\n
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Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin<\/em>. Courtesy Norton<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Paul Gauguin<\/a>, that breakaway French figure who abandoned not only his family but also the European art world, gets some taming in Sue Prideaux<\/a>\u2019s Wild Thing<\/i>. The lively book sees the astute biographer\u2014who has already tackled Edvard Munch<\/a> and Friedrich Nietzsche<\/a>\u2014challenge the popular myth of Gauguin solely as a rebellious libertine. Instead, Prideaux underscores how the artist\u2019s works notably challenged neoclassical ideals of beauty while his politics championed the rights of Indigenous peoples. With newly found writings (and even access to Gauguin\u2019s teeth), this is a deeply restorative biography of one wholly misunderstood artist.<\/p>\n

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SEE ALSO: <\/i><\/b>12 New Non-Fiction Books You Need to Read in 2025<\/i><\/b> <\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Eminent Jews: Bernstein, Brooks, Friedan, Mailer<\/i><\/b> by David Denby<\/b><\/h3>\n
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Eminent Jews: Bernstein, Brooks, Friedan, Mailer<\/em>. Courtesy Henry Holt and Co.<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

New Yorker <\/i>writer David Denby<\/a> tackles the lives of four famous Jews of American arts, politics and letters: Mel Brooks<\/a>, Betty Friedan<\/a>, Leonard Bernstein<\/a> and Norman Mailer<\/a>. The resulting project, Eminent Jews<\/i>, is an entertaining homage to these turbulent and brilliant\u2014if often egotistical\u2014figures who transformed the standards of comedy and vulgarity, American reportage and music and even relations between men and women. Denby argues that the four helped \u201cliberate the Jewish body,\u201d seeking to reframe what it meant to be Jewish and American in the aftermath of history\u2019s most heinous crimes against the Jewish people.<\/p>\n

Mark Twain <\/i><\/b>by Ron Chernow<\/b><\/h3>\n
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Mark Twain<\/em>. Courtesy Penguin Press<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Every few years, readers get a mammoth doorstop of a biography\u2014and at 1,200 pages, Ron Chernow<\/a>\u2019s Mark Twain<\/a><\/i> is this year\u2019s. The Pulitzer Prize-winning writer has produced an exhaustively detailed and discerning account of the Huckleberry Finn <\/i>and Tom Sawyer<\/i> author that shines a light on less appreciated parts of Twain\u2019s biography. We learn, for instance, that Twain wrote countless articles in his career aggressively rebuking America\u2019s treatment of Chinese immigrants. Razor-sharp and unflinching in its sizing up of Twain, this eponymous book is essential reading for students of American literature.<\/p>\n

How to Lose Your Mother: A Daughter\u2019s Memoir<\/i><\/b> by Molly Jong-Fast<\/b><\/h3>\n
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How to Lose Your Mother: A Daughter\u2019s Memoir<\/em>. Courtesy Viking<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Erica Jong<\/a> caused shockwaves with her 1973 roman \u00e0 clef Fear of Flying<\/i><\/a>, which depicted an unashamed incarnation of female sexuality. Her daughter, the writer and political commentator Molly Jong-Fast<\/a>, now gives a frank and unfiltered diagnosis of the strained relationship she had with her distant celebrity mother. How to Lose Your Mother<\/i> proves a riveting reckoning on the challenging ties many have to their parents. The memoir is both heartbreaking and humorous in mapping resentment, guilt and grief Jong-Fast all confronts as her mother\u2019s mind deteriorates and she reflects on a life playing second-fiddle to this feminist force.<\/p>\n

The M\u00f6bius Book <\/i><\/b>by Catherine Lacey<\/b><\/h3>\n
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The M\u00f6bius Book<\/em>. Courtesy Farrar, Straus and Giroux<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Author of the transgressive novel Autobiography of X<\/i>, Catherine Lacey<\/a> returns with a hybrid novel-meets-memoir anchored in Lacey\u2019s break-up with an elusive man called \u201cThe Reason.\u201d The M\u00f6bius Book <\/i>has no beginning or end but stresses the cycles that punctuate our lives, musing on memory and fiction and the centrality that faith\u2014whatever form that may take\u2014can have. With a heavy emotional thrust and a singular style, this book might resist easy definitions or categories but asks gnawing universal questions on intimacy, security and belief systems that are sure to enthrall many.<\/p>\n

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SEE ALSO: <\/i><\/b>11 Short Books to Help You Jumpstart Your 2025 Reading Resolutions<\/i><\/b><\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The Story of ABBA: Melancholy Undercover <\/i><\/b>by Jan Gradvall<\/b><\/h3>\n
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The Story of ABBA: Melancholy Undercover.<\/em> Courtesy St. Martin\u2019s<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A founding figure behind the Swedish Music Hall of Fame and a confidante to band members, Jan Gradvall<\/a> has penned an insider\u2019s take on ABBA. The beloved Swedish pop band, who first hit big after winning 1974\u2019s Eurovision Song Contest with \u201cWaterloo,\u201d gave Gradvall rare access and long, candid interviews that helped the journalist mount one complete history of these enduring music icons. The fact that the band returned in 2021 with a hit new album and virtual concert residency makes their backstory and enduring success even more tantalizing to now read about.<\/p>\n

Joyride: A Memoir <\/i><\/b>by Susan Orlean<\/b><\/h3>\n
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Joyride: A Memoir<\/em>. Courtesy Avid Reader Press<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Susan Orlean<\/a> is a discerning observer of the human experience and an equally talented writer when chronicling it. Joyride<\/i> sees The New Yorker<\/i> contributor, however, turn her attention to her own life and career, one that was infamously fictionalized in the 2001 film Adaptation<\/i>. It promises to be an intimate account of untold pains of her life\u2014the loss of her mother, her mortality, a marriage breakdown\u2014alongside career\u00a0backstories and coups after fifty years in journalism (like working with the likes of Robert Gottlieb<\/a>, Tina Brown<\/a> and Jonathan Karp<\/a>). In all, the exercise is fueled by creativity and a hunger for answers, pursuits that fared Orlean well after decades of reporting so adeptly on others\u2019 life stories.<\/p>\n

Mother Mary Comes to Me <\/i><\/b>by Arundhati Roy<\/b><\/h3>\n
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Mother Mary Comes to Me<\/em>. Courtesy Scriber<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Ever since winning the Booker Prize for her 1997 novel The God of Small Things<\/i>, Arundhati Roy<\/a> has used her global platform to advance human rights causes and urgent environmental issues. Roy now looks inward, however, turning her attention<\/a> to her complex relationship with her mother, Mary, a famous women\u2019s rights advocate who helped win a landmark Supreme Court ruling in India on inheritance rights. But Roy ran away from home at age 18 and remained estranged from her mother for years. It\u2019s a decision Roy finally reflects on in the aftermath of her mother\u2019s death in 2022, weaving together raw musings on loss, regret and the complex bonds that bind us.<\/p>\n

Cher: The Memoir, Part 2<\/i><\/b> by Cher<\/b><\/h3>\n
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Cher: The Memoir, Part 2<\/em>. Courtesy Dey Street Books<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Cher might have recently confessed that she hasn\u2019t even finished writing part two of her blockbuster two-book memoir. But if part one is anything to go by, the acclaimed singer and actress is sure to meet her deadline again. It\u2019s due to pick up when Cher pivoted to acting in the early 1980s, after a lackluster period in the music business following the end of Sonny & Cher. The resulting story might already be known\u2014an Academy Award, a revitalized music career and countless comebacks\u2014but Cher\u2019s bare honesty (and trademark humor) promises to bring new shine to this well-trodden arc of her life.<\/p>\n

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