A memoir is typically shorter than a traditional autobiography, which intends to tell the full story of the writer's life in his own words. A memoir, however, is meant to capture specific highlights and key moments in a person's life, not provide a thorough documentation of it. Rather, memoirs may be more impressionistic, relating to the subject's emotions and thoughts on these events as opposed to merely relating them.
Memoirs are identified by certain characteristics. They describe an event or several related events to let the reader know why the events were significant. Memoirs also don't span a long period of time, as an autobiography would. A memoir will often examine one particular issue or conflict as seen through the writer's eyes, and his impressions of his involvement. An example of this latter characteristic can be seen in a memoir written by a government official that discusses the specific events that took place while she was in office.
Another characteristic of memoirs involves veracity, in that the reader may not be getting the whole truth. Because a memoir is based entirely on one person's recollection and opinions, the information is far from a journalistic account and can be unreliable and one-sided. American humorist Will Rogers summed up this particular problem with memoirs when he said, "When you put down the good things you ought to have done, and leave out the bad things you did do --- well, that's memoirs."
According to a 2008 article from CNN.com, the popularity of memoirs rose considerably after the publication of Frank McCourt's best-seller "Angela's Ashes," in which the author recounted his childhood in Ireland. The article also notes that celebrity memoirs have become particularly popular and that five of the top 10 books on the "New York Times" best-seller list for that particular week were memoirs by celebrities such as actress Julie Andrews and baseball player Jose Canseco. Patsy Vigderman, a professor at Kenyon College in Ohio, explained the phenomenon by comparing the public's fascination with celebrity memoirs to the popularity of reality television: "For some reason, people right now are gripped by the idea that [it's better if] it's really true."