From Augustine's Confessions to Augusten Burroughs's Running with Scissors, from Julius Caesar to Ulysses S. Grant, from Mark Twain to David Sedaris, the art of memoir has had a fascinating life, and deserves its own biography. As Yagoda says: 'Memoir has become the central form of the culture: not only the way stories are told, but the way arguments are put forth, products and properties marketed, ideas floated, acts justified, reputations constructed or salvaged.

How did we come to this pass? The only way to answer that question is to go back a couple of thousand years and tell the story from the beginning, ' which is just what Yagoda does in this excellent history (The Washington Post).