The autobiography of Solomon Maimon

"Wry and spirited, shrewd and unrepentant, Maimon alternated between nomadic destitution and intellectual swordplay among the Jewish elite of Berlin. The son of a petty merchant in Polish Lithuania, Maimon was a child Talmud prodigy who became increasingly antagonistic toward the secular philosophies of Spinoza, Hume, Leibnitz, and Kant.".