Figure It Out

Foreword by Alexandra Stoddard, author of Living a Beautiful Life: 500 Ways to Add Elegance, Order, Beauty and Joy to Every Day of Your Life.'Often we come to a point in our lives when we dispense with thetrivial and tire of ordinary superficialities,' writes Peter MegargeeBrown in Figure It Out: A Guide to Wisdom. Here he has collected someof the most profound statements of all time, and gathered them intotopical sections reflecting the depth of the thinker behind the triallawyer. Sprinkled with his comments on the quotations he has carefullyselected over many years, sparkling anecdotes and essays complementthe quotations and provide a complete and thought-provoking portraitof each subject. Brown leads you through the great subjects mankind has grappledwith since the beginning-spirituality, love, life, death, friendship-and offers much more-his appraisal of the complexities of character,writing, history, memory, privacy, travel-drawing on the wisdom ofgreat philosophers including Aristotle, Hillel, Voltaire and Hegel,Supreme Court Justices Oliver Wendell Holmes, Benjamin Cardozo andJoseph Story, the late Tony Snow, writers such as George Bernard Shaw,Ayn Rand, Maureen Dowd and Malachy McCourt, politicians WinstonChurchill and Theodore Roosevelt, painter Henri Matisse and architectFrank Lloyd Wright. A collection that can be read cover-to-cover or flipped throughfor a moment of illumination, Figure It Out: A Guide to Wisdom willentertain and enlighten seekers of truth. Turn to this treasury forinspiration, as Alexandra Stoddard says in the Foreword, 'Whether youare a reader, a writer, a historian, a philosopher, or a speaker atimportant events-even making a toast-this personal selection willdelight you, uplift you, and help you to Figure It Out.' Peter Megargee Brown began his legal career as assistant counselto John Marshall Harlan on the New York State Crime Commission. AfterMr. Harlan was appointed to the United States Supreme Court, Mr. Brownwent on to become chief litigator for the New York firm of Cadwalader,Wickersham & Taft. In 1982, he founded his own law firm in New York,Brown & Seymour. He is a Past President of the Federal Bar Council anda Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers. He is the author ofnumerous books, including The Art of Questioning: Thirty Maxims ofCross Examination. He was educated at Yale College and Yale Law Schooland lives with his wife, the designer and author Alexandra Stoddard,in Stonington, Ct. The Peter Megargee Brown Papers, the legal papers of the author,comprising 303 bound volumes of his principal law suits over 50 yearsof practice in the United States Supreme Court and Appellate Courts,are available for the use of students and scholars and can be found inthe 'Manuscripts and Archives' section of the Yale University Library.