A Memoir (2019 National Book Award Winner)
by Sarah M. Broom
Recommended by Barack Obama and Eddie S. Glaude Jr.
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See customer reviews on Amazon →Sarah M. Broom's memoir moves between family memory, personal detail, and local history, using a single shotgun house in New Orleans East as the hinge for larger forces. Its strongest material is close, sensory writing that makes household objects and neighborhood changes feel consequential. The book rewards readers who like layered, essayistic structure rather than linear plot. Frustrations come from frequent non-linear digressions and dense passages that slow momentum, which will annoy readers wanting tidy chronology or brisk pacing. Overall, it's immersive but patient reading.
This summary and audience guidance are AI-generated from the book's description and its recommendation history, last updated June 2026. Recommendations, quotes and sources elsewhere on this page come from published material and are not generated.
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSLLER A brilliant, haunting and unforgettable memoir from a stunning new talent about the inexorable pull of home and family, set in a shotgun house in New Orleans East.In 1961, Sarah M. Broom's mother Ivory Mae bought a shotgun house in the thenpromising neighborhood of New Orleans East and built her world inside of it. It wa...
Difficulty:hard
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View available editions on AmazonWhy recommended
Recommended by 3 sources and appears in Memoir, Autobiographies, and Most Recommended Books.
People and public figures who have recommended this book.
Recommendation proof is sourced from public posts, interviews, reading lists, and cited references.
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Consider Accidental Presidents by Jared Cohen. Recommended by 10 sources.
“Accidental Presidents offers eight narrative portraits of men who succeeded to the U.S. presidency without election, using anecdote-rich scenes and readable context to show how personality and circumstance interact with office power. It’s strongest as a set of self-contained stories that make succession stakes concrete for non-specialist readers; it does not prioritize dense archival argument or exhaustive methodology, so expect some interpretive generalizations and repeated themes across cases. Use it for fast historical orientation rather than scholarly deep-dives.”
Each recommendation is collected from a public source — interviews, articles, or curated lists — and linked to its original URL. Books with many verifiable recommendations from respected people rank higher.
