I read a few memoirs each year, looking primarily for works by writers and other real people. In other words, I avoid the tales put forth by politicians and entertainment celebrities. What is memoir? Memoir is a tiny word for a huge variety of life stories, sometimes comprehensive tales from childhood to old age, other times a few meaningful weeks plucked out of a life that may have changed that life in unexpected ways. We, as readers, often develop the habit of reading only one or two genres, mostly fiction. But real people all over the world have shared something intimate and profound about their lives and times. We can learn something different from memoir than we can from the best of the best in history books because we get a slice of that history from one point of view. History is made up of those unique perspectives. I am grateful to those writers who are brave enough to give us a piece of themselves. I don’t know anything about writing memoir, but I think it’s safe to say that t...