Augustine, bishop of Hippo, looks back on his sinful youth, his conversion to Christianity, and addresses it all directly to God. Written around 400 CE, these are the first true memoirs in Western literature, the first sustained investigation of a self by that self. The stolen pears, the mistress he loved and abandoned, the voice in the garden that said 'take up and read': these scenes have shaped how the West understands conversion, memory, and interior life. The prose is prayer. Thirteen books that invented the autobiography.