Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer
by Sarah Bakewell
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Recommended by 5 notable people, including Derek Sivers and Marc Andreessen
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See customer reviews on Amazon →This is a conversational, essayistic book that stitches together life-lessons, anecdotes, and historical detail around a Renaissance-minded writer’s questions about how to live. It works best as bedside reading: short passages that provoke reflection rather than deliver checklists. what works best is its tone — an intimate, chatty narrator who turns old texts into modern questions. Its chief limitation is repetition and occasional meandering: readers who prefer tight argument or clear takeaways may find several passages indulgent or impressionistic.
This summary and audience guidance are AI-generated from the book's description and its recommendation history, last updated May 2026. Recommendations, quotes and sources elsewhere on this page come from published material and are not generated.
Winner of the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award for BiographyHow 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. They are all versions of a bigger question: How do you live This question obsessed Renaissance writers, none more than Michel Eyquem de Mon...
Difficulty:hard
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View available editions on AmazonWhy recommended
Recommended by 8 sources and appears in Books Recommended by Ryan Holiday, Biographies, and Most Recommended Books.
People and public figures who have recommended this book.
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Consider The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse by Charlie Mackesy. Recommended by 8 sources.
“Soft-spoken, heavily illustrated fable built from short dialogues and watercolor sketches. Each spread pairs a spare line of text with a loose drawing, so the pleasure is visual and aphoristic rather than narrative; readers collect felt-true sentences more than plot. Most useful when you want quick consolations, a prompt for conversation with a child, or a pause during a rough day. Limiting if you want sustained argument, concrete advice, or tightly plotted storytelling: the repetition of gentleness can feel sentimental or thin after a while.”
Each recommendation is collected from a public source — interviews, articles, or curated lists — and linked to its original URL. Books with many verifiable recommendations from respected people rank higher.
