The Whole Five Feet

This unique memoir of reading the classics to find strength and wisdom “makes an elegant case for literature as an everyday companion” ( The New York Times Book Review ).   While undergoing a series of personal and family crises, Christopher R. Beha discovered that his grandmother had used the Harvard Classics—the renowned “five foot shelf” of great world literature compiled in the early twentieth century by Charles William Eliot—to educate herself during the Great Depression. He decided to