The Whole Five Feet: What the Great Books Taught Me About Life, Death, and Pretty Much Everthing Else - Softcover

Beha, Christopher

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0802144853 ISBN 13: 9780802144850

Publisher: Grove Press, 2010

Synopsis

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. The result is a smart, big-hearted, and inspirational mix of memoir and intellectual excursion that deftly illustrates how books can save one’s life” (Helen Schulman).

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From Publishers Weekly:

At first glance, Beha's situation is enviable: the 27-year-old Princeton graduate quits his job and is welcomed back into his parents' Manhattan apartment, where he decides to dedicate himself to reading all 51 volumes of the Harvard Classics Library, a five-foot shelf of (mostly) Western literature from Plato to Darwin. If only it were that easy: he must come to terms with the death of a beloved aunt early in the year, then is himself afflicted with a torn meniscus and a serious case of Lyme disease. With so much personal drama, the classics frequently take a back seat, and several volumes go completely unremarked. Beha spends the most time on those books that spoke most keenly to his personal circumstances; not only does he discuss John Stuart Mill's existential crisis at length, for example, he compares his own reaction to reading Wordsworth to the philosopher's. The broader conclusions Beha (now an assistant editor at Harper's) reaches about cultural values and the meaning of life are disappointingly pat; even the young memoirist concedes, I haven't written the book I set out to write. (May)
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About this edition

• Publisher: Grove Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0802144853
• ISBN 13: 9780802144850
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272