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Scorsese is best known as a filmmaker; the books below are the ones he has actually written or co-authored, not the many biographies and critical studies written about him.
Martin Scorsese’s books are almost all extensions of a conversation rather than solo-authored prose: a career-spanning interview collection, a companion volume to his own documentary on American film history, and, most recently, a book-length dialogue on faith with a Jesuit priest. Read together, they trace the same questions that run through his films — guilt, redemption, and the history of cinema itself — just in his own words instead of through a camera.
By Lisanne Swart · 4 books · Film & Faith · IMDb Filmography · Best Memoirs · Updated July 2026
InterviewsStart here
Scorsese on Scorsese
A career-spanning collection of interviews in which Scorsese talks through his films one by one, from his student shorts to Casino, discussing technique, influences, and the personal history behind each project in far more depth than a standard press interview allows.
The closest thing to a Scorsese memoir that exists. Because it’s structured film by film, it works as a companion to rewatching his filmography in order, not just a one-off read.
Film history
A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies
The companion volume to Scorsese’s 1995 documentary of the same name, walking through American film history from his own perspective as both director and lifelong film enthusiast — covering genre, the studio system, and the directors who shaped his own sense of what a film could do.
Read this if you want Scorsese the film historian rather than Scorsese the subject of an interview. It’s less personal than Scorsese on Scorsese but more useful as an actual guide to American cinema.
Interviews
Martin Scorsese: Interviews
Part of the Conversations with Filmmakers series, this collects interviews with Scorsese conducted by different journalists and critics over multiple decades, offering a wider range of interviewers’ angles than the single-editor structure of Scorsese on Scorsese.
A useful supplement once you’ve read Scorsese on Scorsese and want other interviewers’ questions and follow-ups, rather than a second read of the same territory.
FaithHighly recommended
Conversations on Faith
A book-length dialogue between Scorsese and Jesuit priest Fr. James Martin, working through the same questions of Catholic guilt, doubt, and redemption that run through The Last Temptation of Christ, Kundun, Silence, and Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints — here discussed directly rather than through a film.
The most direct statement of the theme that connects almost everything else on this list. If you’ve watched The Saints and wondered how much of it reflects Scorsese’s own belief rather than historical interest, this is the book that answers that question in his own words.
Where to start with Martin Scorsese’s books
If you have never read anything by him
→ Start with Scorsese on Scorsese. The closest thing to a memoir he has, structured around his own filmography.
If you want the film history angle
→ A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies, the companion to his own documentary.
If faith and religion are what drew you to his work
→ Conversations on Faith, his most direct statement yet on the Catholic themes underneath The Saints, Silence, and Kundun.
Looking for what else I recommend
→ See my best memoirs list and every book I’ve personally reviewed on my bookshelf.
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