Never Say Die

Ke Huy Quan's memoir traces his path from Vietnamese refugee to child star and, decades later, to an Oscar. Five years after his family fled Communist Northern Vietnam for Los Angeles's Chinatown, he went to an open call audition on a whim at twelve and landed in the film business: Harrison Ford taught him to swim while they filmed Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and he made lifelong friends on The Goonies. Within a few years the roles dried up, and he left acting for behind-the-scenes jobs with directors such as Wong Kar Wai. At 49 he returned to the screen in Everything Everywhere All at Once and won an Oscar.

In his list The 12 New Books to Spice Up Your Fall, Adam Grant called it a remarkable story of a refugee who became a child star, then turned a dead end into a new opening.