
How to Live
Or a Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer
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Narrated by:
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Davina Porter
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By:
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Sarah Bakewell
About this listen
National Book Critics Circle Award, Biography, 2011
This question obsessed Renaissance writers, none more than Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, perhaps the first recognizably modern individual. A nobleman, public official, and winegrower, he wrote free-roaming explorations of his thought and experience, unlike anything written before. He called them essays, meaning “attempts” or “tries.” He put whatever was in his head into them: 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. The Essays was an instant best seller and, over four hundred years later, Montaigne’s honesty and charm still draw readers to him. They come in search of companionship, wisdom, and entertainment - and in search of themselves.This book, a spirited and singular biography, relates the story of Montaigne’s life by way of the questions he posed and the answers he explored. It traces his bizarre upbringing, his 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. 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?”
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Story
In this searing novel, Kathrine Kressmann Taylor brings vividly to life the insidious spread of Nazism through a series of letters between Max, a Jewish art dealer in San Francisco, and Martin, his friend and former business partner who has returned to Germany in 1932, just as Hitler is coming to power. A powerful and eloquent tale about the consequences of a friendship - and society - poisoned by extremism, Address Unknown remains hauntingly and painfully relevant today.
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A Literary Classic
- By MRM5217 on 07-18-23
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The Complete Essays of Montaigne
- By: Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
- Narrated by: David McCallion
- Length: 47 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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One of the most remarkable figures of the Renaissance, Michel de Montaigne was a brilliant French philosopher and statesman whose work directly influenced René Descartes, Friedrich Nietzsche, Isaac Asimov and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He was a humanist and a sceptic, with an insatiable and wide-ranging curiosity. In 1571, on his 38th birthday, he withdrew from public life and retired to the library in his castle tower, where he assembled a body of work that is still highly relevant today.
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Unlistenable
- By Renee Downing on 02-17-18
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The Book of Charlie
- By: David Von Drehle
- Narrated by: David Von Drehle
- Length: 7 hrs
- Unabridged
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When a veteran Washington journalist moved to Kansas, he met a new neighbor who was more than a century old. Little did he know that he was beginning a long friendship—and a profound lesson in the meaning of life. Charlie White was no ordinary neighbor. Born before radio, Charlie lived long enough to use a smartphone. When a shocking tragedy interrupted his idyllic boyhood, Charlie mastered survival strategies that reflect thousands of years of human wisdom.
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Loved it
- By Josee on 06-09-23
By: David Von Drehle
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The Essays
- A Selection
- By: Michel Montaigne, M. A. Screech
- Narrated by: Thomas Judd
- Length: 16 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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To overcome a crisis of melancholy after the death of his father, Montaigne withdrew to his country estates and began to write, and in the highly original essays that resulted he discussed themes such as fathers and children, conscience and cowardice, coaches and cannibals, and, above all, himself.
By: Michel Montaigne, and others
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Wisdom of Leo Tolstoy
- By: Leo Tolstoy
- Narrated by: Mark Turetsky
- Length: 4 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Leo Tolstoy was born to an aristocratic Russian family, became a world-famous influential novelist, and then chose to lead the simple life of a peasant. Dating from this last part of his life, Tolstoy’s influential book What I Believe takes readers along on the path to a life modeled literally on Jesus Christ’s "Sermon on the Mount" and the teachings of the Gospels. In revealing and frank essays he reimagines a faith without dogma, centered solely on Jesus’ doctrine of love, humility, and self-denial.
By: Leo Tolstoy
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Montaigne
- By: Stefan Zweig
- Narrated by: Tyler Boss
- Length: 2 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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"The others form the human being, I depict him; and here I present an individual who is quite poorly formed and whom I would certainly make largely differently if I had to reshape him. But now that's the way he is." This phrase from the famous essays of Michel de Montaigne outlines the character of the author and his work. Montaigne wrote his essays not from a position of certainty but from an awareness of his inadequacy. He thus reveals a level of critical self-reflection that, before his time, was rarely put on paper.
By: Stefan Zweig
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It Can't Happen Here
- By: Sinclair Lewis
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 14 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Doremus Jessup, a newspaper editor, is dismayed to find that many of the people he knows support presidential candidate Berzelius Windrip. The suspiciously fascist Windrip is offering to save the nation from sex, crime, welfare cheats, and a liberal press. But after Windrip wins the election, dissent soon becomes dangerous for Jessup. Windrip forcibly gains control of Congress and the Supreme Court and, with the aid of his personal paramilitary storm troopers, turns the United States into a totalitarian state.
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The Rise of American Authoritarianism
- By David S. Mathew on 11-21-16
By: Sinclair Lewis
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The Choice
- Escaping the Past and Embracing the Possible
- By: Dr. Edith Eva Eger
- Narrated by: Tovah Feldshuh
- Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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A powerful, moving memoir - and a practical guide to healing - written by Dr. Edith Eva Eger, an eminent psychologist whose own experiences as a Holocaust survivor help her treat patients and allow them to escape the prisons of their own minds. The Choice weaves Eger's personal story with case studies from her work as a psychologist. Her patients and their stories illustrate different phases of healing and show how people can choose to escape the prisons they construct in their minds and find freedom, regardless of circumstance.
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One Of The Most Powerful Books I Have Read in My Lifetime!
- By R. F. Wood on 05-11-18
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Marcus Aurelius
- The Stoic Emperor
- By: Donald J. Robertson
- Narrated by: Donald J. Robertson
- Length: 6 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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This novel biography brings Marcus Aurelius (121-180 CE) to life for a new generation by exploring the emperor’s fascinating psychological journey. Donald J. Robertson examines Marcus’s relationships with key figures in his life, such as his mother, Domitia Lucilla, and the emperor Hadrian, as well as his Stoic tutors. He draws extensively on Marcus’s own Meditations and correspondence, and he examines the emperor’s actions as detailed in the Augustan History and other ancient texts.
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Robertson does it again
- By J. Gilmore on 02-17-24
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Parting the Waters
- America in the King Years 1954-63
- By: Taylor Branch
- Narrated by: Prentice Onayemi, Janina Edwards
- Length: 45 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Hailed as the most masterful story ever told of the American civil rights movement, Parting the Waters is destined to endure for generations. Moving from the fiery political baptism of Martin Luther King, Jr., to the corridors of Camelot where the Kennedy brothers weighed demands for justice against the deceptions of J. Edgar Hoover, here is a vivid tapestry of America, torn and finally transformed by a revolutionary struggle unequaled since the Civil War.
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Excellent
- By Judith Princz on 05-15-19
By: Taylor Branch
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Slow Productivity
- The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout
- By: Cal Newport
- Narrated by: Cal Newport
- Length: 6 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Our current definition of “productivity” is broken. It pushes us to treat busyness as a proxy for useful effort, leading to impossibly lengthy task lists and ceaseless meetings. We’re overwhelmed by all we have to do and on the edge of burnout, left to decide between giving into soul-sapping hustle culture or rejecting ambition altogether. But are these really our only choices?
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Cal Needs Narration Training
- By T. S. Tatum on 04-25-24
By: Cal Newport
The narrator
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A wonderful tale of his life and writings.
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Probably one of the best history reads
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Interesting and in parts Inspired.
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Myself, I choose Montaigne'a cat...
Schrodinger or Montaige's cat? You choose…
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it is much more than a simple review or sample of " the essays "
the book's unique benefit comes from a sly and deeper approach
sarah bakewell tries to answer the question of how to live
to do this she shows us just how michel de montaigne lived
how could 1500's france have given rise to such a modern soul ?
a world of endless religious & political turmoil / concern about a plague
the burden of inherited comfort and position and expectations
a loveless marriage / the death of one's only true male friend
life was clearly too much for montaigne and he retreated
he feared losing his own soul and the essays were his attempt to find it
hello ! / any of this sound familiar to a modern reader ?
how can we find serenity in a world beyond our control ?
can courage and wisdom be found to know where we can make a difference ?
sarah bakewell reaches back 500 years for a very good answer
how to live ? / how he lived !
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A meandering masterpiece
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has deepened my appreciation of the man and his magnum opus.
It would be a wiser and better world were all of humanity to read both How To Live, and its subject’s essays.
How to live? Read Sarah Bakewells Life of Montaigne, then Montaigne himself.
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A wonderful book about how to live one's life
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Editor Needed
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