The Best-Selling Irish Biography Books of All Time

The author recounts his childhood in Depression-era Brooklyn as the child of Irish immigrants who decided to return to worse poverty in Ireland when his infant sister dies.

NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • Bono—artist, activist, and the lead singer of Irish rock band U2—has written a memoir: honest and irreverent, intimate and profound, Surrender is the story of the remarkable life he’s lived, the challenges he’s faced, and the friends and family who have shaped and sustained him. • A VOGUE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR. “A brilliant, very funny, very revealing autobiography-through-music. Maybe the best book ever written about being a rockstar.” —Caitlin Moran, award-winning journalist. “When I started to write this book, I was hoping to draw in detail what I’d previously only sketched in songs.

The people, places, and possibilities in my life. Surrender is a word freighted with meaning for me. Growing up in Ireland in the seventies with my fists up (musically speaking), it was not a natural concept. A word I only circled until I gathered my thoughts for the book. I am still grappling with this most humbling of commands. In the band, in my marriage, in my faith, in my life as an activist. Surrender is the story of one pilgrim’s lack of progress ... With a fair amount of fun along the way.” —Bono. As one of the music world’s most iconic artists and the cofounder of the organizations ONE and (RED), Bono’s career has been written about extensively. But in Surrender, it’s Bono who picks up the pen, writing for the first time about his remarkable life and those he has shared it with. In his unique voice, Bono takes us from his early days growing up in Dublin, including the sudden loss of his mother when he was fourteen, to U2’s unlikely journey to become one of the world’s most influential rock bands, to his more than twenty years of activism dedicated to the fight against AIDS and extreme poverty. Writing with candor, self-reflection, and humor, Bono opens the aperture on his life—and the family, friends, and faith that have sustained, challenged, and shaped him. Surrender’s subtitle, 40 Songs, One Story, is a nod to the book’s forty chapters, which are each named after a U2 song. Bono has also created forty original drawings for Surrender, which appear throughout the book.

Father William Doyle was an exceptional Jesuit priest, whose scholarly writings and promise were tragically cut short by his death while serving in World War One. Born in Melrose at Dalkey, County Dublin, Doyle expressed an interest in religious service and soldiering from a young age. Born in modest circumstances to a large family, William was the youngest of seven children. Frail and prone to illness in youth, the lad overcame fragility of health and made his decision to enter the Jesuit ministry.

From his earliest years in study of the Bible, Doyle demonstrated an immense aptitude for the holy scriptures and the principles of the Lord Jesus. His priesthood was marked by frequent writings on Christian subjects - much of this was published during his life, while other poignant notes were compiled into collections. All display clear, commonsense spiritual advice, as well as excursions to wit and liveliness that serve to make Father Doyle's counsel all the more valuable. Father Doyle's boyhood dream of becoming a soldier was answered when, in 1914, war broke out in Europe. He enthusiastically enlisted as a chaplain in the British Army, and was promptly sent to the Western Front in France, where he bore witness to the carnage of trench warfare. By all accounts Doyle's strength of spirit remained; he was popular in his unit, and saved several of his comrade's lives - many considered Doyle to have divine protection. Yet his death was sudden; an exploding shell ended his life, at the age of only forty-four.