Golda Meir, Israel’s fourth P.M., recounts her journey to power in her 1975 autobiography. Typical line: “I was certainly not known either for my subtle phraseology or for my great concern with protocol, and seven years at the Ministry of Labor wasn’t their idea of the most suitable background for a foreign minister.” Burt Reynolds, master of the knockout toupee, released his own 330-page autobiography in 1994. He doesn’t skimp on the details: “Walking into my house was like arriving in the middle of a combination Fourth of July, nudist camp and New Year’s Eve party–in San Francisco.” Critic Heather Mallick wrote in the Toronto Sun, “Burt’s book is truly dreadful… But I did rather enjoy reading it, I confess. As the latest stage in his recent public nervous breakdown, it’s very amusing.” Certainly more amusing than “My Life” by Leon Trotsky, a 694-page forced march through the rise of the proletarian dictatorship, written during the first year of Trotsky’s exile in Turkey. If it’s foreign affairs you like, try “Ma Vie,” the compiled recollections of French chanteuse Edith Piaf, touching on her rise from poverty, her love life and various addictions. And the 244-page 2003 memoir of Josephine Ferguson is a piece of true Americana. Ferguson was born in a farmhouse in Audrain County, Mo., and the witty octogenarian writes with candor about growing up in the rural Midwest and her little everyday trials and triumphs.
