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

Sarah Bakewell organizes this biography around the central question of how to conduct a human life, using Michel de Montaigne’s sixteenth-century Essays as a map. Rather than a chronological narrative, the book presents twenty possible answers based on Montaigne’s personal habits and philosophical shifts. The text tracks his transition from a retired nobleman in a tower to a mayor and diplomat amidst the French Wars of Religion. Bakewell details his Stoic engagement with pain, his skeptical approach to absolute truth, and his focus on immediate sensory experiences like playing with his cat or observing his own physical ailments.

Readers interested in the intersection of philosophy and historical biography value this book for its practical application of Renaissance thought. People look to this text to understand how to remain moderate in polarized times and how to cultivate comfort with uncertainty. The reader gains a framework for self-observation and a historical perspective on the development of the modern individual. By following Montaigne’s attempts to know himself, the audience learns to treat their own daily routines and internal contradictions as subjects worthy of serious attention.