How is it that despite an international outcry, the displacement of nearly two million people and the murder of upwards of half a million more continues to this day in Darfur? “[E]ven though some people think Darfur is simple genocide,” Daoud Hari writes in his remarkable memoir, The Translator, “it is important to know that it is not. It is a complicated genocide.” Readers will get some sense of the political and psychological complexity of this genocide in Hari’s vivid account of the harrowing 40 days during 2006 when he, American journalist Paul Salopek and their driver, Ali, were arrested, tortured and accused of being spies, first by rebel gunman of Hari’s own tribe, then by a mad regional commander inspired by the atrocities at Abu Ghraib, and finally by the military governor representing the government of Sudan.

But Hari’s stirring memoir is not meant to be a geopolitical analysis of the conflict raging through the western region of Sudan. Rather it is a personal, surprisingly engaging story of his own experiences growing up in Darfur as the youngest son in a family of herders and shepherds. Their centuries-old way of life was shattered in 2003 when members of his Zaghawa people rose up against repression by the Sudanese government, which used the occasion to launch a systematic effort to depopulate the Darfur region.

Hari, who developed a passion for English novels in high school, became a translator for a commission investigating genocide in Darfur and later for American reporters. Released, finally, from prison in Sudan, Hari continues to advocate for the people of Darfur with a sweetness and humanity that is vastly more compelling than the Sudan government’s argument of bullets and bombs.

Pretty, blonde Brit Catherine Sanderson clicks and blogs her way into love, heartache and self-revelation in the amusing page-turner Petite Anglaise. Yorkshire-born, Sanderson had always longed for France and, at age 18, she crossed the Channel on an invitation from her French pen pal. She returns a few years later as a teaching assistant, acquires a live-in boyfriend, has his child and lands a welcome, though ho-hum, secretarial job. Out of this landscape eventually sprout tendrils of dissatisfaction with the unvarying round of household chores, childcare and work: "my dream Paris had . . . melted away. . . . Lately I’d become a bitter, resentful shadow of the breathless, enthusiastic petite anglaise I once was, a person I was far from sure I even liked."

Under the cover of an Internet persona, "Petite Anglaise," Sanderson captivatingly recounts the giddy highs and disheartening lows of her reinvention in this narrative that reads like a chick lit novel with a rueful soupcon of hard-earned hindsight. Her witty, frank, tell-all blog quickly attracts followers, all eager to read the latest insouciant installment of Sanderson’s ups and downs with boyfriend Mr. Frog, daughter Tadpole and new beau James (an Internet find). But the virtual rubber meets the imaginary road as the boundaries of Sanderson’s addictive cyber-life begin to blur into day-to-day reality: new love gets rough, her job is in jeopardy and sobbing into cyberspace can’t replace in-the-flesh friendships. She begins to wonder: is all this cathartic blogging helping or hindering her destiny?

This entertaining story is a truly modern tale of self-discovery, embellished with the City of Light (and the strange world of the Internet) as luscious backdrop. The final curtain on Sanderson’s tale attests to the eternal allure of Paris: as the author sips espresso at a sidewalk café, she realizes, "I couldn’t imagine anywhere else on earth I’d rather be. I’d forgotten how much it was possible to love this city."

Alison Hood writes from Marin County, California.

Larry McMurtry is, of course, best known for his novels, many of which have been made into movies, including The Last Picture Show, Terms of Endearment and Lonesome Dove. But in his memoir Books he barely addresses those years spent writing. Instead, he focuses on his lifelong love of books, and his hidden life as a bookseller.

The genesis of McMurtry’s passion for books and reading was not his early family life; his family’s Texas ranch house was "totally bookless," he writes. It was a cousin, departing for war in 1942, who dropped off a box of books with Larry, then six. When the family moved to Archer City, Texas, the young McMurtry ensconced himself in the library; by his senior year he was obsessed with books. In 1970, he and a partner bought the stock of Lowdermilks, a D.C. shop that was going out of business. This became the core of his own store, Booked Up, a Georgetown fixture for 32 years before moving to its current location in Archer City.

McMurtry fills his short chapters with details of bookshops across the country, the ins and outs of major auctions, and the importance of book scouts who visit junk shops and yard sales. He also offers detailed profiles of a m∧#233;lange of booksellers and their very specific areas of expertise. He eschews online bookselling and bemoans the preponderance of computers now in public libraries saying they "drive out books" from their rightful space.

McMurtry admits that this volume, filled with the "arcane detail" of the antiquarian book trade, may not appeal to the general reader. But for book lovers who can’t pass a used bookstore without ducking inside, this memoir will make that next visit even more enticing.

Bill Patten’s family acquaintances were some of the most powerful figures of the 20th century, names like Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy. As the scion of a diplomat father and socialite mother, Patten grew up surrounded by people of wealth and influence. He attended some of the finest boarding schools, spent weekends at his family’s country estates, and studied at Harvard and Stanford universities. But Patten eventually discovers his real father was not the man with whom he shared a last name: his mother conceived her son during an affair with another man.

Thus forms the backstory for Patten’s memoir, My Three Fathers, a tale about a trio of influential men who shaped the author’s life. The first was William S. Patten, an East Coast aristocrat who spent much of his life as a diplomat in Europe. In 1939, Patten married debutante Susan Mary Jay, a descendent of John Jay, the first chief justice of the Supreme Court. The Pattens moved to Paris for one of his diplomatic assignments, where they met Duff Cooper, a British war hero, Churchill confidant and fellow diplomat. Susan Mary Patten carried on an affair with Cooper, became pregnant and gave birth to a son. Whether her husband ever knew his son was not his biological child is unknown; Patten took that answer to his grave when he died in 1960.

A year later, the author’s mother became Susan Mary Alsop when she married syndicated columnist Joseph Alsop, a longtime family friend. Bill Patten, then 12, was introduced to another social sphere when he moved from Europe to Washington, D.C., where Joseph Alsop rubbed elbows with presidents, senators and other Beltway luminaries. The Kennedys were regular guests, as were Henry Kissinger, newspaper publisher Katherine Graham, even Truman Capote.

It wasn’t until 1996 that a 47-year-old Bill Patten learned the identity of his real father, revealed in an offhanded comment by his mother while she was in rehab for alcohol abuse. Initially crushed by the news, Patten came to terms with the revelation by researching the lives of his mother and her paramours, and expressing his words on paper.

My Three Fathers is the result of that effort, and, despite the title, is as much about Patten’s tortured relationship with his strong-willed mother. It is also a fascinating glimpse into the gilded lives of the American aristocracy and how often glamorous appearances are a deceptive veneer that conceals the untidy truth.

John T. Slania is a journalism professor at Loyola University in Chicago.

Noel Coward once said that only "mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun." Journalist Jeroen van Bergeijk, whose chronicle of an "auto-misadventure across the Sahara," piloting his used 190D from Amsterdam to Ouagadougou in My Mercedes Is Not for Sale, is Dutch. You do the math.

Crazy-making is also often funny-making, and van B’s musings on subjects like the state of African commerce ("Things in Africa come in two forms: broken or almost broken.") inform the armchair traveler about the real on-the-road experience in ways Baedeker and Lonely Planet never could. In a place where border delays may be measured in days rather than minutes, our explorer has learned to pass his idle time wisely: not only do we hear digressions, related in some detail, about the history of the Paris to Dakar Rally and the disastrous expeditions to map out the desert in advance of a never-completed Trans-Sahara Railway, we also meet every previous owner of his humble Mercedes and travel to the factory in Bremen where it was built two decades ago.

Places like Mauritania, Togo, Burkina Faso and Benin will likely never rank with France, Mexico, The Bahamas or even China as a potential vacation destination. But thanks to a crazy Dutchman who boldly went where few men ever go, entertaining us every kilometer of the way, I’m dusting off the old passport and thinking . . . maybe a visit to Disneyland would be nice this summer.

Ah, the frothy fun and occasional heartbreak of a slightly snarky, narcissistic sob story. Who doesn’t like that? Especially when mixed with lulling surf, a comfy lounge chair and a long, cool drink nestled nearby. If this recipe for relaxation holds appeal, then be sure to slip Up for Renewal: What Magazines Taught Me about Love, Sex, and Starting Over into your beach tote.

Author Cathy Alter, with a neurotically humorous flair for enumerating her foibles (think Bridget Jones), sets out to improve her junky, less-than-wholesome lifestyle by turning to the pages of slick consumer magazines for guidance. Alter, a 37-year-old freelance writer churning out “painfully dry sales and marketing material” by day, is recently divorced and living life on the edge. She engages in risky “cubicle” sex with a playboy co-worker, fuels herself on pepperoni and Cherry Coke and compulsively overspends so that she’s “reduced to paying for my morning coffee with fists of pennies.” Enter O, Marie Claire, Elle, Cosmo and the rest of the SWF 20s-to-30s demographic glossies to the rescue. For 12 months, Alter vows to follow, to the letter, these magazines’ dictums on cooking, diet, exercise, entertaining, sex and the path to true love.

Her writing is witty and raunchy, and her attempts at change are often (comically) tragic. She sticks to her self-help guns, eventually realizing that “you can’t solve life’s mysteries with the right pair of shoes or the perfect shade of lipstick. . . . But at least I tried.”

A good memoir is like a good loaf of bread. First, there’s the crispy crust, making way for the airy, chewy center. All this good loaf of bread needs is a wedge of cheese, a piece of fruit and a glass of wine.

Trail of Crumbs, a memoir by Kim Sunee, is full of the crusty tidbits and airy, chewy morsels of her life. Abandoned as a toddler by her mother in South Korea, Sunee was adopted and raised by an American couple in New Orleans. There, her Asian features announced her otherness, and distanced her from family and friends. As a college student searching for a place she could truly call home, she traveled first to France and then to Sweden. In Stockholm at the tender age of 23, she met Olivier Baussan, founder of L’Occitane, a French skin care and bath company, who would eventually form olive oil chain Oliviers & Co. She moved to France with him, beginning a decade-long relationship. During the often stormy connection, Sunee explored and deepened her love for food and cooking, became a loving stepmother to Olivier’s young daughter, and eventually discovered her need to create something of her own, for herself, by herself.

As a child of the Asian and American cultures, neither of one of which she felt comfortable in, Sunee also never felt comfortable in France, where she was identified first by others, and later by herself, as Olivier’s woman. Her attempts to find her own essence, through running a poetry bookstore, then through psychoanalysis, are at times encouraged and hindered by Olivier, whose controlling nature ultimately overpowers the relationship.

Trail of Crumbs also includes several recipes for Provencal-style dishes like cream of chestnut soup, figs in red wine and creme caramel, as well as some from her Louisiana upbringing. They are the wine and cheese of the memoir, bright spots in an otherwise crusty, chewy account of Sunee’s search for a place to call home.

Kelly Koepke is a freelance food and lifestyle writer in Albuquerque, New Mexico.