Survival Stories (Non-Fiction)
By Helen Fremont
The author tells how she discovered that her parents were Jews who survived the Holocaust and explores the elaborate deceptions her parents concocted to preserve her and her sister.
By Louis W. Kasischke
Recommended By Neela Vass, Head of Acquisitions
The story of one survivor from the fatally tragic 1996 Mt. Everest expedition.
By Paul Piers Read
Recommended By Amy B., Children's Librarian
“On October 12, 1972, an Uruguayan Air Force plane carrying a team of rugby players crashed in the remote snowy peaks of the Andes. Ten weeks later, only sixteen of the forty-five passengers were found alive (From the Publisher).”
By Katherine Boo
Recommended By Neela Vass, Head of Acquisitions
With Lisa Jones, Readers' Services Librarian
Tuesday, April 9, 2013. 7:30 PM.
Winner of the 2012 National Book Award for Non-Fiction
“Profiles everyday life in the settlement of Annawadi as experienced by a Muslim teen, an ambitious rural mother, and a young scrap metal thief, illuminating how their efforts to build better lives are challenged by religious, caste, and economic tensions (From the Publisher).”
By Mariatu Kamara with Susan McClelland
When Mariatu set out for a neighborhood village in Sierra Leone, she was kidnapped and tortured, and both of her hands cut off. She turned to begging to survive. This heart-rending memoir is a testament to her courage and resilience. Today she is a UNICEF Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict.
By Liz Murray
With Jackie Ranaldo, Head of Readers' Services
Monday, September 9, 2013. 7 PM.
"The author offers an emotional account of her amazing journey from a 15-year-old living on the streets and eating garbage to her acceptance into Harvard, a feat that prompted a Lifetime movie and a successful motivational-speaking career (From the Publisher)."
*A 2011 Alex Award Winner
By Enjeela Ahmadi-Miller
Recommended By Neela Vass, Head of Acquisitions
A heart-stopping memoir of a girl shaken by the brutalities of war and empowered by the will to survive, The Broken Circle brilliantly illustrates that family is not defined by the borders of a country but by the bonds of the heart.
By Tim Jarvis
Outfitted solely with authentic items from the time period, a leading explorer recounts his modern-day journey to retrace the perilous 1914 expedition of Sir Ernest Shackleton, a three-year Antarctic adventure that became one of the greatest stories of endurance and survival ever recorded.
By Eric Lamet
Recommended By Jackie, Head of Readers' Services
When the author was seven, his family’s middle-class Viennese existence was shattered by the Nazi seizure of Austria. His father fled to Poland, where he presumably perished in a death camp. Lamet and his mother made a harrowing escape to Italy, where they spent months seeking refuge in various isolated mountain villages.
By Dave Pelzer
Recommended By Kalpana Mehta, Reference Librarian
David Pelzer, victim of one of the worst child abuse cases in the history of California, tells the story of how he survived his mother's brutality and triumphed over his past.
A dual memoir and guide to healing by a psychologist and Holocaust survivor counsels patients on how to escape the prisons of their own minds, describing her harrowing experiences in Auschwitz and how it gave her particular insights into the challenges of PTSD.
By Clara Kramer
An account based on the author's personal record of the months during which she hid from Nazis in an underground bunker with seventeen others discusses the characteristics of their unlikely protector and the house fire that threatened everyone's survival.
By Clara Kramer
Recommended By Jackie, Head of Readers' Services
“This heart-stopping story of a young girl hiding from the Nazis is based on Clara Kramer's diary of her years surviving in an underground bunker with seventeen other people (From the Publisher).”
By Bana Al Abed
Recommended By Jackie, Head of Readers' Services
A full-length account of the young Twitter activist's harrowing experiences in war-torn Siberia describes how her home was decimated by bombings and dwindling supplies before her family embarked on a perilous escape to Turkey.
By Hector Tobar
Recommended By Sonia Grgas, Reference Librarian
Presents a firsthand, official account of the 2010 survival story involving thirty-three miners who were trapped for a record sixty-nine days in a Chilean mine.
Became the movie: The 33
After her plane crashes, a seventeen-year-old girl spends eleven days walking through the Peruvian jungle. Against all odds, with no food, shelter, or equipment, she gets out. A better equipped group of adult survivors of the same crash sits down and dies. What makes the difference? Through close analysis of case studies, author Laurence Gonzales describes the essence of a survivor and offers twelve "Rules of Survival." In the end, he finds, it is what's in your heart, not what's in your pack, that separates the living from the dead.
By Andy Hall
Recommended By Amy B., Children's Librarian
Draws on survivor testimonies, lost documents and radio communications to chronicle the harrowing 1967 Mount McKinley climbing tragedy involving the deaths of seven mountaineers.
By Blaine Harden
Recommended By Jackie, Head of Readers' Services
Presents a dramatic account by one of the few survivors born in North Korea's infamous political prison camps, describing the brutal conditions he was forced to endure as a child, his witnessing of his family's executions, and his final, harrowing escape.
By Regina Calcaterra
Recommended By Neela Vass, Head of Acquisitions, Jean Buchholtz, Library Clerk, Amy B., Children's Librarian
“A tenacious lawyer, state official, and activist records her childhood in foster homes and on the streets with her four siblings, revealing a life of horrible abuse in the shadows between Manhattan and the Hamptons (From the Publisher).”
By Loung Ung
The stirring true story of a girl who survived the brutality of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia retraced her steps from the forced “evacuation” of Phnom Penh in 1975 when she was a girl of five, to her family’s subsequent movements from town to town and eventual separation, which resulted in her parents’ deaths and her being trained as a child soldier.
By Sheri Fink
Recommended By Amy B., Children's Librarian, Jackie, Head of Readers' Services
Reconstructs five days at Memorial Medical Center after Hurricane Katrina destroyed its generators to reveal how caregivers were forced to make life-and-death decisions without essential resources.
By Krystyna Chiger
Recommended By Jackie, Head of Readers' Services
“Chiger's exceptional story of a small Jewish girl stands out among the many Holocaust survival narratives as one that will touch the hearts of teens and adults alike and bring home the horrors of this very dark period in history (School Library Journal Review).”
By Aspen Matis
After suffering an emotional trauma, the author seeks healing in the freedom of the wild, on the 2,650-mile Pacific Crest Trail leading from Mexico to Canada, during which she came to terms with her sexual assault and her parents disappointing reaction, and found strength, hope, love and acceptance.
By Hyeonseo Lee
Recommended By Audrey Honigman, Library Clerk
An extraordinary insight into the life under one of the world's most ruthless and secretive dictatorships–and the story of one woman's terrifying struggle to escape.
By Dawn Ahid MacKeen
Presents the inspiring story of a young Armenian’s harrowing escape from genocide and of his granddaughter’s quest to retrace his steps.
By Malala Yousafzai
Recommended By Neela Vass, Head of Acquisitions, Kalpana Mehta, Reference Librarian
With Lisa Jones, Readers' Services Librarian
Tuesday, March 22, 2016. 1:30 PM.
Documents the educational pursuits of the Nobel Peace Prize nominee who became an international symbol of hope and inspiration when she challenged the traditions of her Pakistan community, offering insight into the influential role of her courageous father.
By Doug Stanton
“The definitive account of this harrowing chapter of World War II history-- In Harm’s Way is a classic tale of war, survival, and extraordinary courage (From the Publisher).”
By Nathaniel Philbrick
With Barney Levantino, Reference Librarian
Tuesday, June 14, 2016. 7:30 PM.
Recounts the story of the 1820 wreck of the whaleship Essex, which inspired Melville's classic Moby-Dick, and describes its doomed crew's ninety-day attempt to survive whale attacks and the elements on three tiny lifeboats.
Film Showing: Friday, June 17, 2016. 2 PM.
By Elizabeth Bettina
Recommended By Jackie, Head of Readers' Services
Take a journey with the author as she discovers much to her surprise, that her grandparent's small village, nestled in the heart of southern Italy, housed an internment camp for Jews during the Holocaust, and that it was far from the only one.
By Chil Rajchman
Recommended By Jackie, Head of Readers' Services
One of the few survivors of the Nazi death camp Treblinka during World War II, the authors tells the story of how he survived by becoming one of the workers whose grim task it was to tend to the dead and went on to take part in the Treblinka’s workers’ revolt and later testified at a war-crime tribunal.
By Ishmael Beah
Recommended By Pam Strudler, Programming & Arts Librarian, Jackie, Head of Readers' Services
Ishmael Beah described his experiences after he was driven from his home by war in Sierra Leone and picked up by the government army at the age of thirteen, serving as a solider for three years before being removed from fighting by UNICEF and eventually moving to the United States.
By Saroo Brierley
Recommended By Neela Vass, Head of Acquisitions
A full-length account of the author’s inspirational effort to find his India birthplace describes how he was accidentally separated from his family in the mid-1980s, his survival on the streets of Calcutta, his adoption by an Australian family and his headline-making Google Earth search.
By Janusz Bardach
Chronicles the author’s life during his stay at the Kolyma prison camp in Siberia.
By Elie Wiesel
With Jackie Ranaldo, Head of Readers' Services
Tuesday, November 15, 2016. 7:30 PM.
The narrative of a boy who lived through Auschwitz and Buchenwald provides a short and terrible indictment of modern humanity.
By Thea Halo
The daughter of a woman who survived the Turkish genocide of Armenians and Pontic Greeks during World War I recalls her mother's extraordinary story of survival.
Genres: Biography/Memoir; History; Modern Era; Survival Stories (Non-Fiction)
By Cheryl Diamond
Recommended By Jackie, Head of Readers' Services
In this impossible–to–believe true story of self-discovery and triumph, the author, born into a family of outlaws with no proof that she even existed, shares her escape from the only people she had in the world in order to survive.
Presents a vivid account of a history-making storm that hit the New England coast in October 1991 and the lives it changed, weaving together the history of the fishing industry, the science of storms, and personal accounts.
Became the movie: The Perfect Storm.
By Christopher R. Browning
Drawing on the testimony of survivors of the Holocaust-era Starachowice slave-labor camps, the author of Ordinary Men examines the Jewish prisoners’ fight for survival through a succession of brutal Nazi camp regimes.
By Cate Linberry
Recommended By Jean Buchholtz, Library Clerk
“Recounts how the passengers and crew of an American medical evacuation plane, including thirteen nurses and thirteen medics, survived after it crashed in Nazi-controlled Albania in November, 1943, until they could be rescued (From the Publisher).”
By John Aldridge and Anthony Sosinski
Two veteran sailors who co–own and operate a Montauk lobster boat recount the 2013 search–and–rescue mission for co–author John Aldridge, describing how his partner, their families, the local fishing community and the U.S. Coast Guard in three states mobilized an unprecedented and ultimately successful operation.
The woman abducted at age 11 by a man and woman who subsequently held her hostage and sexually abused her for 18 years discusses her life.
By Michael Finkel
Recommended By Jackie, Head of Readers' Services, Neela Vass, Head of Acquisitions
With Jackie Ranaldo, Head of Readers' Services
Tuesday, April 24, 2018. 1:30 PM.
Documents the true story of a man who endured an isolated existence in a tent in the Maine woods, never speaking with others and surviving by stealing supplies from nearby cabins, for twenty–seven years, and illuminates the reasons behind his solitary life.
By Tracy Kidder
Recommended By Audrey Honigman, Library Clerk, Jackie, Head of Readers' Services
“The “master of the non-fiction narrative” gives us the inspiring account of one man’s remarkable American journey and of the ordinary people who helped him — a brilliant testament to the power of will (From the Publisher).”
By Primo Levi
The true and harrowing account of Primo Levi’s experience at the German concentration camp of Auschwitz and his miraculous survival; hailed by The Times Literary Supplement as a “true work of art”, this edition includes an exclusive conversation between the author and Philip Roth.
By Laurence Gonzales
Highlights the survivors of various traumas and describes their lives both before and after and offers a detailed discussion of the fear, courage and the flexibility of the spirit that drives people onward after a life-threatening experience.
By Ben Sherwood
“Sherwood travels worldwide to gain insight from people who have survived a slew of near fatal phenomena (Publishers Weekly Review).”
By Donald E. Miller
Interviews with one hundred survivors of the Armenian genocide of 1915 to 1923 reveals the mass deportations, torture, and brutality that destroyed communities and killed more than one million Armenians.
By Lauren Hillenbrand
Recommended By Rosemarie Germaine, Senior Library Clerk, Jean Buchholtz, Library Clerk
With Ralph Guiteau, Readers' Services Librarian
Tuesday, October 16. 7:30 PM.
On a May afternoon in 1943, an Army Air Forces bomber crashes into the Pacific and Lt. Louis Zamperini survives. Captured by the Japanese and driven to the limits of endurance, he would answer desperation with ingenuity; suffering with hope, resolve, and humor.
By Carlos Eire
A memoir of the Cuban Revolution from the perspective of a Batista-era child describes his carefree early days, the harrowing legal changes that occurred with the ascension of Fidel Castro, his witness to the disappearance of numerous peers, and his eventual relocation to the United States during Operation Pedro Pan.
By Sonali Deraniyagala
Recommended By Amy B., Children's Librarian
"A memoir of the author’s experiences as a survivor of the 2004 tsunami that killed her parents, husband, and two young sons recounts her struggles with profound grief and survivor’s guilt and her gradual steps toward healing (From the Publisher)."