Top 10 autobiographies that remind us of our mortality

Greg Baxter is a fiction writer and essayist who lives in Dublin. He is the author of A Preparation for Death (Penguin Ireland, 2010). He worked as a Creative Writing tutor in the Irish Writers’ Centre from 2006 to 2009, before launching the Workshops at Some Blind Alleys. He has published essays and short stories in journals such as the Dublin Review, Cincinnati Review, and Southwest Review. He regularly reviews for the Irish Times.

For the Guardian, he named his top ten momento mori. One title on the list:

Death of Wisdom: Essays by Michel de Montaigne

If aliens ever attack earth, and we have one opportunity to prove that the human species deserves a second chance, we must give them Montaigne, the humblest and most noble thinker and writer who ever lived. His incomparable exploration of the human condition begins with one fearless question: What do I know?

Read about another entry on Baxter's list.

--Marshal Zeringue