Books like 'tis a memoir

'Tis is a memoir written by Frank McCourt. Published in 1999, it begins where McCourt ended Angela's Ashes, his Pulitzer Prize winning memoir of his impoverished childhood in Ireland and his return to America.

The book begins as McCourt lands at Albany, New York, and quickly makes his way to New York City. Friendless and clueless about American customs, he struggles to integrate himself into American blue-collar society. He is then drafted into the US Army, sent to Europe, and rises to the rank of corporal. On his stay in Germany, he has confrontations with many people who try to show Frank how to get a Russian refugee girl to have sexual intercourse with him by giving her coffee or cigarettes. He is granted leave from the army as compensation for his exceptional service as a clerk-typist and goes back home to Ireland to see his family. He then decides to return to the US, where he attends New York University – despite never having graduated from high school. He falls in love with and eventually marries a middle-class American-born girl, Alberta Small (nicknamed Mike), whom he meets at university.