from baswood

[Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays translated and edited with an introduction and notes by M. A. Screech]. [How to Live, A life of Montaigne in one question and twenty attempts at an answer] by Sarah Bakewell. Reading the Complete essays I had to wait a long time before I came across that ...

from

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. The essays are wide ranging and introspective, as essays are, they touch on any topic and train of thought the author wishes the expl...

from Brasidas

This is an excellent book. I enjoyed Montaigne's ESSAYS immensely when I read them some years ago. Yet one leaves the ESSAYS, or at least I did, with little understanding of how Montaigne's thought fits into an historical context. Like most people I was not trained in the "good letters." Moreover...

from claudeboyd

The best nonfiction book to come along in at least a year is set in 16th-century France. Without a single boring page, "How to Live" rolls conversationally through the much-analyzed life of Montaigne, the brilliant and approachable French essayist who has been called the Original Blogger for his ...

from evenlake

This is the best book I've read this year. Part biography, part history, part literary criticism, it explores Montaigne, his world, and his work. Starting with Montaigne's Essays, and spiraling out to encompass his life, and the life of his work over the centuries since he died, Bakewell has wri...