Book Summary and Reviews of The Whole Five Feet by Christopher Beha

The Whole Five Feet by Christopher Beha

The Whole Five Feet

What the Great Books Taught Me About Life, Death, and Pretty Much Everything Else

by Christopher Beha

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  • Published:
  • May 2009, 256 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

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.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"The broader conclusions Beha...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.'" - Publishers Weekly

"Near the end, he questions if a slower and more meditative focus may have been a better strategy. He is probably right, but such an approach would not have produced this charming odyssey." - Library Journal

"The personal and family stories are almost always gripping; the comments about great books, less so." - Kirkus Reviews

This information about The Whole Five Feet was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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