An autobiography

An autobiography is a book about the life of a person, written by that person. Biographers generally rely on a wide variety of documents and viewpoints, an autobiography, however, may be based entirely on the writer's memory.

Memoirs

Closely associated with autobiography (and sometimes difficult to precisely distinguish from it) is the form of memoir. Memoirs are constructed from formal autobiographies which tend to encompass the writer's entire lifespan, focusing on the development of his or her personality.

The chronological scope of a memoir is determined by the work's context and is therefore more focused and flexible than the traditional arc of birth to old age as found in an autobiography. Will Rogers put it a little more pithily. Memoirs means when you put down the good things you ought to have done and leave out the bad ones you did do.

As you travel the pages of my life, I hope your trip to be as thrilling as when I lived it.