Short Life in a Strange World

"At the age of 42, his father not long dead and his young sons growing fast, Toby Ferris set off on a seemingly quixotic mission to track down each of the 42 surviving paintings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, who, at the age of 42, had been approaching the end of his own short life. The results of his journey are a revelation: Bruegel's panels, their landscapes teeming with robust life, become a lens through which Ferris takes stock of the world, informing everything from mortality, fatherhood and contemporary life, to the bombing of Rotterdam, the extinction of North American megafauna and how to ward off bears in the forest."--adapted from publisher's description