69. The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography - Sidney Poitier

This is a great story (although I'm not quite sure what makes it a "spiritual autobiography") of the life of actor Sidney Poitier. Poitier talks about growing up very poor in the Bahamas; moving to Miami with his brother when he was a teenager; and eventually moving to New York where he worked as a dishwasher and eventually started taking drama classes and started acting.
The first few chapters moved a bit slowly for me; the book picked up a bit about a quarter of the way through when he talks about his time in the army. After having joined the army, Poitier realized that it had been a bad decision. His anger about the decision started seeping out, and he threw a chair at the head of one of his senior officers. Here is a passage from when he's talking about being faced with a court martial:

"...The act was premeditated. Yes. And calculatedly designed. Yes. But not to do harm. My scenario called for the chair to miss that officer by inches. And in fact it did ... My overall purpose was aimed at something other than that officer's head. An excuse was my immediate objective. My actions were a shameful attempt to establish an excuse that would allow me to eventually walk away from obligations I had freely and solemnly assumed. Simply put, I wanted to get the hell out of the army."

Some parts of the book were quite interesting - like Poitier's description of his first interaction with Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn before they filmed Guess Who's Coming to Dinner; his explanation of how he goes deep inside himself to to make a connection with the character he's playing when he's acting; and also his work with the play A Raisin in the Sun. So although the story of Poitier's life is certainly interesting, I wouldn't say that the book itself was spectacular.