6 Writers Reveal the Books That Changed Their Lives

"I first read Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz in my 20s, in law school. I knew about the Holocaust, of course. But I had never really appreciated its relevance to me personally—to everyone—until reading this book. It was the author's initial surprise at being thought of as a Jew that hit me. I am still stunned by his realization: that any of us can be assigned to a group, regardless of our own sense of identity, and then subjected, arbitrarily, to eradication."