How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer
Sarah Bakewell · 2010
A life of Montaigne, who invented the essay by writing about himself honestly, organised as twenty answers to the question of how to live. A friendly way into someone who spent his life trying to understand his own mind without a system.
Worth knowing: A biography with a point of view. Bakewell is clear about which answers are Montaigne's and which are hers.