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Humanly possible : seven hundred years of humanist freethinking, inquiry, and hope / Sarah Bakewell.

by Bakewell, Sarah, 1963-

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Knopf Canada, 2023.

Humanism in literature.

Philosophy, Renaissance.

Essays -- 21st century.

9780735274303 (hc.)

454 p. ; 24 cm.

Sarah Bakewell had a wandering childhood, growing up on the 'hippie trail' through Asia and in Australia. She studied philosophy at the University of Essex and worked for many years as a curator of early printed books at the Wellcome Library, London, before becoming a fulltime writer. Her books include "How to Live, or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer," which won the Duff Cooper Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and "At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails," one of the New York Times' Ten Best Books of 2016. Bakewell was also among the winners of the 2018 Windham-Campbell Prize. She still has a tendency to wander but is mostly to be found either in London or in Italy with her wife and their family of dogs and chickens.

"The bestselling author of 'How to Live and At the Existentialist Café' explores seven hundred years of writers, thinkers, scientists, and artists, all trying to understand what it means to be truly human.Voyaging from the literary enthusiasts of the fourteenth century to the secular campaigners of our own time, from Erasmus to Esperanto, from anatomists to agnostics, from Christine de Pizan to Bertrand Russell, and from Voltaire to Zora Neale Hurston, Bakewell brings together extraordinary humanists across history. She explores their immense variety: some sought to promote scientific and rationalist ideas, others put more emphasis on moral living, and still others were concerned with the cultural and literary studies known as 'the humanities.' 'Humanly Possible' asks not only what brings all these aspects of humanism together but why it has such enduring power, despite opposition from fanatics, mystics, and tyrants."

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