“Happily, early on, James J. Patterson discovered that the bumpy road through life was lined with books. Clearly, somewhere along the way he pulled out a volume of Montaigne. ¨The young 20th century rebel must have found much to admire in the French Renaissance thinker’s essays, and especially the meaning of the word essayer, to try both as a philosophy of living and as a style for writing. The essays in Patterson’s delightful volume, Bermuda Shorts, highlight the ways in which life and literature intertwine. And, like the 16th century master, Patterson makes this literary form his own invention.”