In Quotidiana Patrick Madden illuminates common actions and seemingly commonplace moments, making connections that revise and reconfigure the overlooked and underappreciated. Madden muses on the origins of human language, the curative properties of laughter, and the joys and woes of fatherhood. Sparked by considerations of selling garlic, washing grapes, changing a diaper, or chipping a tooth, his essays are an antidote to the harried hullabaloo of talk-show and tabloid culture and a reminder that we are surrounded by wonders that whisper to the curious and...

Writers of the modern essay can trace their chosen genre all the way back to Michel de Montaigne (1533 92). But save for the recent notable best seller How to Live: A Life of Montaigne by Sarah Bakewell, Montaigne is largely ignored. After Montaigne a collection of twenty-four new personal essays intended as tribute aims to correct this collective lapse of memory and introduce modern readers and writers to their stylistic forebear.
Though it s been over four hundred years since he began writing his essays, Montaigne s writing is still fresh, and his use of the form as a...