850 articles
The Way of a Pilgrim
The Way of a Pilgrim is an anonymous nineteenth-century Russian spiritual narrative in which a wandering peasant learns to practice the Jesus Prayer without ceasing.
The Way to Rainy Mountain
The Way to Rainy Mountain is a 1969 book by N. Scott Momaday that retells the myths, legends, and history of the Kiowa people in three interwoven voices.
The White Goddess
The White Goddess is Robert Graves's 1948 essay arguing that true poetry comes from the inspiration of a lunar Mother-goddess of Birth, Love, and Death.
The Witness of Poetry
The Witness of Poetry (Świadectwo poezji) is a 1983 book of literary criticism by the Polish Nobel laureate Czesław Miłosz, collecting his six Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard.
The Woman Warrior
The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts, Maxine Hong Kingston's 1976 Knopf memoir blending autobiography with Chinese myth and talk-story; NBCC nonfiction winner, five chapters, genre controversy with Frank Chin, companion China Men.
The Years of Lyndon Johnson
The Years of Lyndon Johnson is Robert A. Caro's multi-volume biography of Lyndon B. Johnson, with four volumes published since 1982 and a fifth in progress.
Thesis statement
Thesis statement: the one- or two-sentence claim, usually at the end of an essay's introduction, naming a topic and the writer's arguable position; guides scope, organization, and evidence, and is not a fact or announcement.
This Boy's Life: A Memoir
This Boy's Life: A Memoir is Tobias Wolff's 1989 memoir (Atlantic Monthly Press) of his 1950s boyhood with his mother Rosemary and abusive stepfather Dwight in Chinook, Washington, ending with his escape to the Hill School; adapted into a 1993 film starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro.
Three Conversations
Three Conversations (Три разговора) is Vladimir Solovyov's last philosophical work, a 1900 dialogue on war, evil, and peace ending with a Short Story of the Antichrist.
Three Guineas
Three Guineas is a 1938 book-length essay by Virginia Woolf, written as a reply to a man asking how war can be prevented and linking patriarchy with militarism.
Thunderstruck (book)
Thunderstruck (2006) is Erik Larson's narrative nonfiction book, published by Crown, interweaving Guglielmo Marconi's invention of wireless telegraphy with Dr. Hawley Crippen's 1910 murder case and transatlantic chase in Edwardian London.
Tides from the West
Tides from the West (西潮) is Chiang Monlin's English autobiography, written in Kunming during WWII air raids and published by Yale University Press in 1947, covering China from the 1842 Treaty of Nanking to Pearl Harbor in 1941; Chiang translated it into Chinese himself for a 1950s Taiwan edition.
Tierras solares
Tierras solares is a 1904 book of travel chronicles by Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío, collecting pieces from La Nación about his journey through southern Spain and Europe.
Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.
Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. is Ron Chernow's 1998 Random House biography of the Standard Oil founder, the first based on unrestricted access to his papers, an NBCC finalist.
To Young Readers
To Young Readers (寄小读者) is a 1926 collection of 29 letters by the Chinese writer Bing Xin, a foundational work of modern Chinese children's literature.
Tokyo Vice
Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan, Jake Adelstein's 2009 memoir of yakuza reporting at the Yomiuri Shimbun, centered on Tadamasa Goto and the FBI liver-transplant story; adapted as a 2022 HBO Max series.
Tosa Nikki
Tosa Nikki (土佐日記, "The Tosa Diary") is a Japanese travel diary attributed to Ki no Tsurayuki, written in kana and regarded as the first kana diary.
Totto-Chan: The Little Girl at the Window (窓ぎわのトットちゃん)
Totto-Chan: The Little Girl at the Window (窓ぎわのトットちゃん) is Tetsuko Kuroyanagi's 1981 Kodansha memoir of Tomoe Gakuen; Japan's biggest postwar bestseller and, since 2023, the Guinness record holder as the most published single-author autobiography.
Towazugatari
Towazugatari (とはずがたり) is a five-volume autobiographical diary by the court lady Go-Fukakusa-in Nijō, recounting her service to retired Emperor Go-Fukakusa and later travels as a nun.
Travel Accounts of Simeon of Poland
The Travel Accounts of Simeon of Poland is the early seventeenth-century travel diary of Simeon Lehatsi, an Armenian deacon born in Zamość in present-day Poland.
Trei Phum
Trei Phum, also romanised Trai Bhumi or Trai Phum, is the Khmer-language treatise on Buddhist cosmology describing the three planes of rebirth, reworked under King Ang Duong.
Tuesdays with Morrie
Tuesdays with Morrie: 1997 Mitch Albom memoir of visits to his dying Brandeis professor Morrie Schwartz; Doubleday, 192 pages, best-selling memoir, Emmy-winning 1999 ABC film and off-Broadway play.
Tuzuk-i-Timuri
Tuzuk-i-Timuri, or Institutes of Timur, is a text presented as the memoirs of the conqueror Timur, reaching the Mughal court in Persian translation around 1637 and now considered a forgery.
Twenty Years at Hull-House
Twenty Years at Hull-House is a 1910 autobiography by social reformer Jane Addams, recounting her childhood and the first two decades of Hull-House, the Chicago settlement house she co-founded in 1889.
Two Years Before the Mast
Two Years Before the Mast, a memoir by writer Richard Henry Dana Jr., recounts his two-year voyage from Boston to Mexican California, documented from the working crew's perspective.
Typee
Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life is Herman Melville's first book (1846), a travel narrative based on his 1842 desertion from the Acushnet and weeks living among the Taipi on Nuku Hiva, Marquesas; controversial, revised, and his most popular lifetime work.
Ulises criollo
Ulises criollo, published in 1935, is the first volume of José Vasconcelos's autobiography, recounting his childhood in Oaxaca and his conspiracy against the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz.
Unbowed: A Memoir
Unbowed: A Memoir is the 2006 autobiography of Wangari Maathai, the Kenyan environmentalist, founder of the Green Belt Movement, and winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize.
Undertones of War
Undertones of War is a 1928 First World War memoir by the English poet Edmund Blunden, based on his service as a junior officer on the Western Front.
Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots
Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots is Deborah Feldman's 2012 Simon & Schuster memoir of growing up in and leaving Brooklyn's Satmar Hasidic community; it became a New York Times bestseller and the loose basis for Netflix's 2020 series Unorthodox.