How to Live
How to Live

Author: Sarah Bakewell

Publisher: Other Press, LLC

Published: 2010-10-19

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 1590514262

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Winner of the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography How to get along with people, how to deal with violence, how to adjust to losing someone you love—such questions arise in most people’s lives. They are all versions of a bigger question: how do you live? How do you do the good or honorable thing, while flourishing and feeling happy? This question obsessed Renaissance writers, none more than Michel Eyquem de Monatigne, perhaps the first truly modern individual. A nobleman, public official and wine-grower, he wrote free-roaming explorations of his thought and experience, unlike anything written before. He called them “essays,” meaning “attempts” or “tries.” Into them, he put whatever was in his head: 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 bestseller and, over four hundred years later, Montaigne’s honesty and charm still draw people to him. Readers come in search of companionship, wisdom and entertainment—and in search of themselves. This book, a spirited and singular biography, relates the story of his life by way of the questions he posed and the answers he explored. It traces his bizarre upbringing, 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?”

The Hidden Habits of Genius
The Hidden Habits of Genius

Author: Craig Wright

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: 2020-10-06

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 006289272X

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“An unusually engaging book on the forces that fuel originality across fields.” --Adam Grant Looking at the 14 key traits of genius, from curiosity to creative maladjustment to obsession, Professor Craig Wright, creator of Yale University's popular “Genius Course,” explores what we can learn from brilliant minds that have changed the world. Einstein. Beethoven. Picasso. Jobs. The word genius evokes these iconic figures, whose cultural contributions have irreversibly shaped society. Yet Beethoven could not multiply. Picasso couldn’t pass a 4th grade math test. And Jobs left high school with a 2.65 GPA. What does this say about our metrics for measuring success and achievement today? Why do we teach children to behave and play by the rules, when the transformative geniuses of Western culture have done just the opposite? And what is genius, really? Professor Craig Wright, creator of Yale University’s popular “Genius Course,” has devoted more than two decades to exploring these questions and probing the nature of this term, which is deeply embedded in our culture. In The Hidden Habits of Genius, he reveals what we can learn from the lives of those we have dubbed “geniuses,” past and present. Examining the lives of transformative individuals ranging from Charles Darwin and Marie Curie to Leonardo Da Vinci and Andy Warhol to Toni Morrison and Elon Musk, Wright identifies more than a dozen drivers of genius—characteristics and patterns of behavior common to great minds throughout history. He argues that genius is about more than intellect and work ethic—it is far more complex—and that the famed “eureka” moment is a Hollywood fiction. Brilliant insights that change the world are never sudden, but rather, they are the result of unique modes of thinking and lengthy gestation. Most importantly, the habits of mind that produce great thinking and discovery can be actively learned and cultivated, and Wright shows us how. This book won't make you a genius. But embracing the hidden habits of these transformative individuals will make you more strategic, creative, and successful, and, ultimately, happier.

Selected Essays
Selected Essays

Author: Samuel Johnson

Publisher: Penguin UK

Published: 2003-02-27

Total Pages: 654

ISBN-13: 014196054X

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This volume contains a generous selection from the essays Johnson published twice weekly as 'The Rambler' in the early 1750s. It was here that he first created the literary character and forged the distinctive prose style that established him as a public figure. Also included here is the best of Johnson's later journalism, including essays from the periodicals 'The Adventurer' and 'The Idler'.

Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson

Author: James T. Boulton

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2002-06-01

Total Pages: 426

ISBN-13: 1134782497

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The Critical Heritage gathers together a large body of critical sources on major figures in literature. Each volume presents contemporary responses to a writer's work, enabling students and researchers to read for themselves, for example, comments on early performances of Shakespeare's plays, or reactions to the first publication of Jane Austen's novels. The carefully selected sources range from landmark essays in the history of criticism to journalism and contemporary opinion, and little published documentary material such as letters and diaries. Significant pieces of criticism from later periods are also included, in order to demonstrate the fluctuations in an author's reputation. Each volume contains an introduction to the writer's published works, a selected bibliography, and an index of works, authors and subjects. The Collected Critical Heritage set will be available as a set of 68 volumes and the series will also be available in mini sets selected by period (in slipcase boxes) and as individual volumes.

Encyclopedia of the Essay
Encyclopedia of the Essay

Author: Tracy Chevalier

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2012-10-12

Total Pages: 1032

ISBN-13: 1135314101

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This groundbreaking new source of international scope defines the essay as nonfictional prose texts of between one and 50 pages in length. The more than 500 entries by 275 contributors include entries on nationalities, various categories of essays such as generic (such as sermons, aphorisms), individual major works, notable writers, and periodicals that created a market for essays, and particularly famous or significant essays. The preface details the historical development of the essay, and the alphabetically arranged entries usually include biographical sketch, nationality, era, selected writings list, additional readings, and anthologies

Circulating Enlightenment
Circulating Enlightenment

Author: Adam Budd

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2020-12-24

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 0191019666

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Historians of the intellectual and literary culture of the Enlightenment have recognised the importance of Andrew Millar (1705-68). His publisher's imprint adorned the title-pages of the most important works of the eighteenth century, in fiction, poetry, drama, medicine, and philosophy. This is the first extended study of Millar's commercial and social role in the commissioning, production, circulation, and consumption of Enlightenment literature in Britain. Providing a new intervention on the culture of Enlightenment this study shows how and why Millar provoked major controversies through his role as friend, patron, and publisher to great rivals in the republic of letters. An unprecedent analysis of publishing and authorship at the intersection of politics, business, visual arts, moral debate, and literary self-fashioning, this study of Andrew Millar also shows the degree to which Scottish identity shaped a professional career within London's rise as the cosmopolitan centre of learning and trade at the heart of the British empire. This volume presents hundreds of previously unpublished letters that passed between Millar and his literary network, and includes the 52 letters that passed between Millar and David Hume, the majority of which have been edited for the first time since 1931. This is a major contribution to the material and intellectual worlds that defined the culture of Enlightenment in Britain during the eighteenth century, casting new light in the history of publishing and authorship.