Read a lot, forget most of it, and be slow to understand. Have a back room in your business. Do something that no one has ever done before. Do your job well, but not too well. Philosophize only casually. Consider everything, regret nothing. With these and other answers to the one question 'How should I live?' Sarah Bakewell guides us through the unusual life of the vineyard owner, lover, essayist, mayor, and traveler Michel de Montaigne. In doing so, she manages to place him firmly in the 16th century, during the age of religious wars, and thereby makes him understandable for our time. How should one read Montaigne? Not like a child, for amusement, and not like the ambitious, to be educated. 'No. Read him to live,' recommended the great Flaubert.