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 the
trivial and tire of ordinary superficialities," writes Peter Megargee
Brown in Figure It Out: A Guide to Wisdom. Here he has collected some
of the most profound statements of all time, and gathered them into
topical sections reflecting the depth of the thinker behind the trial
lawyer. Sprinkled with his comments on the quotations he has carefully
selected over many years, sparkling anecdotes and essays complement
the quotations and provide a complete and thought-provoking portrait
of each subject.
Brown leads you through the great subjects mankind has grappled
with 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 of
great philosophers including Aristotle, Hillel, Voltaire and Hegel,
Supreme Court Justices Oliver Wendell Holmes, Benjamin Cardozo and
Joseph Story, the late Tony Snow, writers such as George Bernard Shaw,
Ayn Rand, Maureen Dowd and Malachy McCourt, politicians Winston
Churchill and Theodore Roosevelt, painter Henri Matisse and architect
Frank Lloyd Wright.
A collection that can be read cover-to-cover or flipped through
for a moment of illumination, Figure It Out: A Guide to Wisdom will
entertain and enlighten seekers of truth. Turn to this treasury for
inspiration, as Alexandra Stoddard says in the Foreword, "Whether you
are a reader, a writer, a historian, a philosopher, or a speaker at
important events-even making a toast-this personal selection will
delight you, uplift you, and help you to Figure It Out."
Peter Megargee Brown began his legal career as assistant counsel
to John Marshall Harlan on the New York State Crime Commission. After
Mr. Harlan was appointed to the United States Supreme Court, Mr. Brown
went 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 and
a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers. He is the author of
numerous books, including The Art of Questioning: Thirty Maxims of
Cross Examination. He was educated at Yale College and Yale Law School
and 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 years
of practice in the United States Supreme Court and Appellate Courts,
are available for the use of students and scholars and can be found in
the "Manuscripts and Archives" section of the Yale University Library.