Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) was a French Renaissance writer most famous for his book Essays (1580), a term he coined, and is credited with inventing the genre. And we also meet his readers-who for centuries have found in Montaigne an inexhaustible source of answers to the haunting question, “how to live?” Read more It traces his bizarre upbringing, youthful career and sexual adventures, his travels, and his friendships with the scholar and poet Étienne de La Boétie and with his adopted “daughter,” Marie de Gournay. This book, a spirited and singular biography, relates the story of his life by way of the questions he posed and the answers he explored. Readers come in search of companionship, wisdom and entertainment-and in search of themselves. The Essays was an instant bestseller and, over four hundred years later, Montaigne’s honesty and charm still draw people to him. He called them “essays,” meaning “attempts” or “tries.” Into them, he put whatever was in his head: his tastes in wine and food, his childhood memories, the way his dog’s ears twitched when it was dreaming, as well as the appalling events of the religious civil wars raging around him. A nobleman, public official and wine-grower, he wrote free-roaming explorations of his thought and experience, unlike anything written before. This question obsessed Renaissance writers, none more than Michel Eyquem de Monatigne, perhaps the first truly modern individual. They are all versions of a bigger question: how do you live? How do you do the good or honorable thing, while flourishing and feeling happy? How to get along with people, how to deal with violence, how to adjust to losing someone you love-such questions arise in most people’s lives. Winner of the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography

How to Live by Sarah Bakewell