How to Live, or a life of Montaigne in one question and twenty attempts at an answer is a book by Sarah Bakewell, first published by Chatto & Windus in 2010, and by Other Press on September 20, 2011.

"[1] In addition to summarizing Montaigne's life and work, How to Live offers an ideological context, discussing the Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics, and their cultivation of prosoche ("mindfulness") through ataraxia ("equilibrium," or having control over your emotions).

[4] It also offers a historical context, explaining Montaigne's time of "soured ideals, when high Renaissance hopes, in Bakewell's words, 'dissolved into violence, cruelty and extremist theology.'"

[6] Similarly, in his review of the book in The Guardian, Nicholas Lezard writes that "Bakewell's title suggests something that might belong in the self-help section of a mainstream bookstore – and I did fear something de Bottonesque – but she approaches her subject very much in a spirit of which he would have approved.

In his review of the book in The Independent, Michael Bywater writes that "Sarah Bakewell embraces [Montaigne's] exuberant digressiveness with delight and obvious profound affection.

"[7] Meanwhile, in his introduction to Bakewell's article on Three Guys One Book, Denis Haritou writes that "Reading How to Live is like wandering in a sun-dappled forest of literature.