Five groundbreaking memoirs

Gail Caldwell is the author of Let's Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship. The former chief book critic of the Boston Globe, she was in 2001 awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Criticism.

For the Wall Street Journal, she named a five best list of memoirs. One book on the list:

Survival in Auschwitzby Primo Levi (1958)

From the opening sentence—"I was captured by the Fascist Militia on 13 December 1943"—this searingly quiet account by Primo Levi, an Italian chemist, of his 10 months in Auschwitz is a monument of dignity. First published in Italy in 1947 with a title that translates as "If This Is a Man," the book became a blueprint for every such story that followed, not only as a portrait of the camp's atrocities but also as a testament to the moments when humanity prevailed. On a mile-long trip with a fellow prisoner to retrieve a 100-pound soup ration, Levi begins to teach his friend "The Canto of Ulysses" from Dante. Completing the lesson becomes urgent, then vital: "It is late, it is late," Levi realizes, "we have reached the kitchen, I must finish." No candle has ever shown more brilliantly from within the caverns of evil.

Read about another memoir on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue