Memoir Project

When Paul Auster was asked to join NPR's Weekend All Things Considered program to tell stories, he turned the proposition on its head: he would let the stories come to him. He invited listeners to submit brief, true-life anecdotes about events that touched their lives.

John Lynch was a promising athlete, but at age 11 was struck by a crippling illness. He was diagnosed with juvenile arthritis (JA), a disease that affects 300,000 children, making them unable to live full-functioning, pain-free lives. John continued to seek new treatments, but not until age 53 was he given the “miracle drug” that enabled him to sustain a 30-year legal practice. During that time, he dedicated his life to helping others who suffered from JA and became a much-honored advocate for easing their distress.

On May 10, 1998, biologist Craig Venter, director of the Institute for Genomic Research, announced that he was forming a private company that within three years would unravel the complete genetic code of human life, seven years before the projected finish of the U.S. government's Human Genome Project. Venter hoped that by decoding the genome ahead of schedule, he would speed up the pace of biomedical research and save the lives of thousands of people. He also hoped to become very famous and very rich.

In April 2014, Rubin "Hurricane" Carter died after a long battle with cancer. David McCallum was exonerated and freed two months later, after serving 29 years in prison. This is the story of how Carter and his friend and coauthor Ken Klonsky worked for 10 years to help free the wrongfully convicted McCallum, along with a group of committed friends and professionals.

Inspired by the resounding success of its cinematic counterpart, Portrait of a Radical / The Jesus Movement reveals the often-overlooked radical nature of Jesus' mission, showing how his transformative message remains a beacon of hope for many and a threat to the powerful. Originally introduced to audiences through a highly acclaimed documentary film that aired on Hallmark and the Discovery Channel. Portrait of a Radical, the book, includes all of the uncut interviews not contained in the film, building upon the captivating narrative that captured viewers.

The Pelee Project is Jane's full memoir of her hilarious faux pas, anecdotes, and epiphanies on the island, all told in that refreshingly honest voice that attracted so many to her columns. The Pelee Project is an inspiring tale of personal transformation and self-discovery.

It is the spring of 1945, and in a dusty, remote community, the world’s most brilliant minds have come together in secret. Their mission: to split an atom and end a war. But among those who have come to Robert Oppenheimer’s "enchanted campus" of foreign-born scientists, baffled guards, and restless wives is a simple man in search of a killer. Michael Connolly has been sent to the middle of nowhere to investigate the murder of a security officer on the Manhattan Project.

CIVIL: Life After the Foreign Legion is the author's follow-up to Appel: A Canadian in the French Foreign Legion. During his recent return to France, he shares with you his past in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Algeria as a security contractor and more.

Who helped you become the person you are today? As Nancy Davis Kho approached a milestone birthday, she decided to answer that question by sending thank-you letters to the many people who had influenced her, helped her, and inspired her over the years: family, friends, mentors, teachers, co-workers, even a couple of former friends and exes. While her recipients always seemed genuinely pleased to read the letters, what Nancy never expected was the profound and positive effect the process would have on her.

A powerful memoir by Nury Turkel lays bare China’s repression of the Uyghur people. Turkel is cofounder and board chair of the Uyghur Human Rights Project and a commissioner for the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom.

Annita Sawyer's memoir is a harrowing, heroic, and redeeming story of her battle with mental illness, and her triumph in overcoming it. In 1960, as a suicidal teenager, Sawyer was institutionalized, misdiagnosed, and suffered through 89 electroshock treatments before being transferred, labeled as "unimproved". The damage done has haunted her life.

A luminous coming-of-age memoir that shimmers with countless marvels, Animals I Want to See tracks Tom Seeman’s journey from a child janitor with big ambitions to a teenage petty criminal to a student at Yale and Harvard. At once a meditation on finding wonder in unlikely places, an ode to a heroic mother who makes the seemingly impossible possible, and an exploration of what it means to create our own identities, this is a heartwarming, thought-provoking, ultimately uplifting book for all listeners.

More than thirty years have passed since The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air premiered on NBC but unlike other family sitcoms of its era, it has remained culturally relevant and beloved by new generations of fans. With fresh eyes on the show in the wake of 2022’s launch of Bel-Air, a Fresh Prince reboot on NBC’s Peacock, The Fresh Prince Project brings us never-before-told stories based on exclusive interviews with the show’s cast, creators, writers, and crew.

In 1986, when her mother died at the age of 64, Eleanor Reissa went through all of her belongings. In the back of her mother’s lingerie drawer, she found an old leather purse. Inside that purse was a large wad of folded papers. They were letters. Fifty-six of them. In German. Written in 1949. Letters from her father to her mother, when they were courting.

The project was simple: An attractive, successful magazine journalist, Robin Rinaldi, would move into a San Francisco apartment, join a dating site, and get laid. Never mind that she already owned a beautiful flat a few blocks away, that she was 44, or that she was married to a man she'd been in love with for 18 years. What followed - a year of sex, heartbreak, and unexpected revelation - is the topic of this riveting memoir, The Wild Oats Project.

The Copper Scroll Project tells the story of an Oklahoma arson investigator, Jim Barfield, who sets off on a decade-long quest to uncover Qumran’s secrets - the lost treasures of the Jerusalem temple - and show the world that the Dead Sea Scrolls were merely the tip of the archaeological iceberg. Could its secrets hold the keys to one of the greatest treasures in Israel’s history?

“Growing up in the Patterson Projects: A South Bronx Tale — Keeping Our Roots Alive” is a poignant collaboration by authors, offering an intimate portrayal of their experiences in the Patterson Projects of the South Bronx. With raw honesty and heartfelt storytelling, they navigate the challenges and triumphs of life in public housing, weaving a narrative that resonates with perseverance and hope.

The first collection of Timothy Leary's (1920-1996) selected papers and correspondence opens a window on the ideas that inspired the counterculture of the 1960s and the fascination with LSD that continues to the present. The man who coined the phrase "turn on, tune in, drop out," Leary cultivated interests that ranged across experimentation with hallucinogens, social change and legal reform, and mysticism and spirituality, with a passion to determine what lies beyond our consciousness.

Starting with a traumatic event that changed her forever, two-time award-winning entrepreneur and certified life coach, Hanneke Antonelli, takes listeners on a journey to hone their entrepreneurial skills and scale more profitable businesses without sacrificing their freedom.

For 20 years, Lisa Murphy, Jeff Murphy, and a group of volunteers traveled the world with the Mobility Project, delivering mobility to the poorest people on the planet. They helped tens of thousands of disabled poor to gain mobility and hope. The disabled received wheelchairs, walkers, and crutches from the United States, items they never would have been able to afford. Like Simon of Cyrene, we helped people carry their cross of disability. From the hot tropical jungles of Costa Rica, Thailand, and São Tomé to the deserts of Afghanistan, the disabled poor got a new chance at life.