Memoir | featured news

Speaking out for the first time since he resigned, retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal takes the blame for a Rolling Stone article and the unflattering comments attributed to his staff about the Obama administration that ended his Afghanistan command and army career.

More 'Kids': Rocker and best-selling writer Patti Smith says she will write a sequel to her National Book Award-winning 2010 memoir, Just Kids, which focused on her relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. She tells Billboard magazine that the next book "is in more of the Just Kids vein and even in the similar time period, but shifts more to family, Fred (Smith, the MC5 guitarist and her late husband), music. So it's a different perspective."

Mr. Fogerty, the singer-songwriter and former front man of Creedence Clearwater Revival, will write a book about the pressures of fame, his tumultuous relationships with his bandmates (including his brother, Tom) and his battle for creative freedom.

Samantha Geimer is writing a memoir to claim a new identity beyond 'the girl' Roman Polanski was accused of raping.

Rielle Hunter says she and former presidential candidate John Edwards are no longer a couple. Hunter told ABC's "Good Morning America" on Tuesday that she and Edwards were still in a relationship until late last week, as details from Hunter's memoir became public. Hunter says the breakup was painful but that Edwards will still be involved with their daughter, Quinn.

Oprah Winfrey — once an unrivaled force in selling books — is back. Her impact can be seen on USA TODAY's Best-Selling books list as Cheryl Strayed's memoir Wild, the first title in Winfrey's relaunched club (announced June 1), rises from No. 92 to No. 14.

It seems that every so often, a memoir shoots up the charts, only to have its journalistic integrity questioned months later as the pendulum swings from adoration to suspicion. From James Frey cowering on Oprah’s couch to “This American Life” debating a warning label for David Sedaris’s essays, the universal truth in nonfiction memoirs is that the accuracy of events will, at some point, be questioned.

Amanda Knox has a book deal. The young exchange student whose conviction in Italy and eventual acquittal on murder charges made headlines worldwide has an agreement with HarperCollins to tell her story. The 24-year-old Seattle resident, imprisoned for four years in Perugia, Italy, has not publicly discussed her ordeal beyond a brief expression of gratitude upon her release last October.

In “The Last Holiday: A Memoir,” Gil Scott-Heron, who died last year, describes his life and America in the second half of the 20th century.

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords vows to return to Congress in a new book that details months of intense therapy and her emotional battle to come to terms with what happened when a gunman opened fire in front of a Tucson grocery store. The memoir, titled "Gabby: A Story of Courage and Hope," is the most personal and detailed look yet at Giffords' efforts over the past 10 months to relearn how to walk and talk, and her painful discovery that six people were killed in the Jan. 8 attack outside a Tucson grocery store.