Five great memoirs, according to author Ben Yagoda by Bob Minzesheimer

Five great memoirs, according to author Ben Yagoda

By Bob Minzesheimer, USA TODAY

"We live in an age of memoir," says Ben Yagoda, who traces their development in his new book, Memoir: A History. Yagoda names "the five greatest memoirs you've probably never heard of."

•Roughing It by Mark Twain (1872). "His account of six years in Nevada, San Francisco and the Sandwich Islands is among his least-known books, but it is a comic gem."

•Memoirs by John Addington Symonds (written 1889-1893, published 1986). "Symonds, an English scholar, was gay and sexually active, and his no-holds-barred memoir could not be published in his lifetime. It's fascinating to chart the change in his attitude: from a rueful sense of himself as a deviant to a sort of defiant pride."

•I'll Cry Tomorrow by Lillian Roth (1954). "Roth, a former Ziegfeld showgirl and early-talkies actress (she was in the Marx Brothers’ Animal Crackers), created a sensation because of the frankness with which it depicted her alcoholism and abuse by husbands and lovers. In some ways, it created the template for the contemporary memoir, with its emphasis on trauma and recovery."

•Growing Up by Russel Baker (1982) and An American Childhood by Annie Dillard (1987). "They're luminous and could easily trade titles, though Baker spends more time on the public realm and Dillard on the private."

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