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Philosophy Books

How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer by Sarah Bakewell
Buy now

How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer

by Sarah Bakewell

Recommendations from our site

“How to Live is the story of the quirky 16th-century genius Montaigne, who was transformed by a narrow escape from death and by the early loss of a friend and became a reflective writer, retiring to his study to write brilliant and sometimes strange essays that can seem peculiarly modern. His digressive writing, often intimately confessional, playful, and challenging, all at the same time, is completely compelling. I challenge you to read Bakewell’s book without turning to the essays themselves. She gives their flavour and context, and discusses the best of them in a way that is both true to her subject, and is immensely satisfying to read.” Read more...

Summer Reading: Philosophy Books to Take On Holiday

Nigel Warburton, Philosopher

“Montaigne wrote this legendarily creative series of essays that have become iconic for what self-reflection can be.” Read more...

The best books on Midlife Crisis

Kieran Setiya

Other books by Sarah Bakewell

Humanly Possible: Seven Hundred Years of Humanist Freethinking, Inquiry, and Hope by Sarah Bakewell

Humanly Possible: Seven Hundred Years of Humanist Freethinking, Inquiry, and Hope
by Sarah Bakewell

At The Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails by Sarah Bakewell

At The Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails
by Sarah Bakewell

The English Dane by Sarah Bakewell

The English Dane
by Sarah Bakewell

The Smart by Sarah Bakewell

The Smart
by Sarah Bakewell

Our most recommended books

  • Plato's Republic

    Republic
    by Plato

  • Walden
    by Henry David Thoreau

  • On Liberty
    by John Stuart Mill

  • Dialogues and Natural History of Religion
    by David Hume

  • Middlemarch
    by George Eliot

  • The Nicomachean Ethics
    by Aristotle

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