Synopses & Reviews
In The Whole Five Feet, Christopher Beha turns to the great books for answers after undergoing a series of personal and family crises and learning that his grandmother had used the Harvard Classics to educate herself during the Great Depression. Inspired by her example, Beha vows to read the entire Five-Foot Shelf, one volume a week, over the course of the next year. As he passes from St. Augustine's Confessions to Don Quixote, from Richard Henry Dana's Two Years Before the Mast to essays by Cicero, Emerson, and Thoreau, he takes solace in the realization that many of the authors are grappling with the same questions he faces: What is the purpose of life? How do we live a good life? What can the wisdom of the past teach us about our own challenges? Beha's chronicle is a smart, big-hearted, and inspirational mix of memoir and intellectual excursion — and a powerful testament to what great books can teach us about how to live our own lives.
Review
"[A] charming odyssey." Library Journal
Review
He is moved...and finds himself changing as the year advances. He has a number of epiphanies...Finally, he resolves to remain a reader in the nonliterary contemporary American culture." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"[H]e makes an elegant case for literature as an everyday companion no less valuable than the iPod." New York Times Book Review
Review
"Without making grandiose claims, this book serves as a guide to today’s perplexed, reflexively ironic reader, an inducement to think seriously without apologizing and feel deeply without hedging." San Francisco Chronicle
Synopsis
Beha turns to the literary classics for answers after undergoing a series of personal and family crises. The author's chronicle is a powerful testament to what great books can teach about how to live life.
About the Author
Christopher R. Beha is an assistant editor at Harper's magazine. His writing has appeared in the New York Times Book Review, the Believer, Tin House, Bookforum, and elsewhere. He lives in New York City.