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The Whole Five Feet: What the Great Books Taught Me About Life, Death, and Pretty Much Everthing Else
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.
273 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 6, 2009
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 117 reviews
July 8, 2017
On finding out how important the Harvard Classics Five Foot shelf of books had been to educate his grandmother during the Great Depression, the author decided to take a year to read the entire set through, at roughly one volume per week, and to write about his experience with these great books.
The result could have been a fascinating look at some of the most important works of Western thought. But the actual result is a self-indulgent mish-mash of superficial thoughts about his own life by a not very interesting person.
It would be generous to claim that half the content of the book has anything to do with the actual writing of the authors involved. It’s usually about himself – sort of like a book review on Moby Dick which uses the book as a basis for an essay about a dismal fishing trip one took with one’s uncle as a child where it rained all day and you caught nothing but a really bad cold.
“Reading” the books, for the author, is something different from what it is to most serous readers. He admits at times that his reading consisted of looking at every word on the page without any attempt at understanding or appreciation. When he falls behind in the summer on his book-a-week schedule, he rushes through six volumes in October, including two volumes of philosophy and theology by Machiavelli, More, Luther, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. Sure, one can look at all the words in these books in less than a week. But what kind of “reading” is that?
And why was it necessary for a reading of a volume on scientific and medical papers to lead into a lengthy discursion on his visit to the Empire State Building to make a donation at a sperm bank? Sorry, Mr. Beha, but that’s just TMI.
What kind of reading is it to read three volumes of English poetry in two weeks? As he admits, he really wanted to take the time to read this poetry properly, but “as it was, I couldn’t take my time if I wanted to finish on schedule. So I pressed on, turning the pages like those of a novel or a biography, knowing all the while that poetry – especially the short lyric poetry that dominates the English tradition – isn’t meant to be read in this way.”
This admission is the self-condemnation of the whole project. The goal was simply to turn these thousands of pages over one by one during the course of one year. No matter that this is writing intended to be thought about, to be lingered over, to be understood. For Beha, it is simply pages to be turned.
It is the literary equivalent of a one week “if this is Tuesday, it must be Belgium” tour of fifteen countries of Europe. “Okay, folks,” says the guide as the bus pulls up to an imposing building, “this is the Louvre. We have a half-hour stop here.” The museum guide race-walks the group through several long corridors, pointing on the fly “that’s the Mona Lisa. If you glance through that door on your left, you can see our collection of Monet’s waterlily paintings. Over across the rotunda there you can see where our Egyptian antiquities are housed. Here’s the gift shop where you can spend the last fifteen minutes of your tour.” But at least when you get home, you can impress your friends by talking about “oh yes, we’ve seen Europe. Oh yes, the Louvre – magnificent, I especially loved the Mona Lisa, and Monet, and their wonderful Egyptian collections.”
If you have any curiosity about what is really in the Harvard Classics, the history of ideas they represent, their value to the human spirit, don’t waste time on The Whole Five Feet. You won’t get any of that. But if “doing” the Louvre or British Museum or MOMA in thirty minutes while listening to the babble of an immature, self-centered “guide” who has glanced at but never seen the art in question is your cup of tea, this book will be perfect for you.
The result could have been a fascinating look at some of the most important works of Western thought. But the actual result is a self-indulgent mish-mash of superficial thoughts about his own life by a not very interesting person.
It would be generous to claim that half the content of the book has anything to do with the actual writing of the authors involved. It’s usually about himself – sort of like a book review on Moby Dick which uses the book as a basis for an essay about a dismal fishing trip one took with one’s uncle as a child where it rained all day and you caught nothing but a really bad cold.
“Reading” the books, for the author, is something different from what it is to most serous readers. He admits at times that his reading consisted of looking at every word on the page without any attempt at understanding or appreciation. When he falls behind in the summer on his book-a-week schedule, he rushes through six volumes in October, including two volumes of philosophy and theology by Machiavelli, More, Luther, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. Sure, one can look at all the words in these books in less than a week. But what kind of “reading” is that?
And why was it necessary for a reading of a volume on scientific and medical papers to lead into a lengthy discursion on his visit to the Empire State Building to make a donation at a sperm bank? Sorry, Mr. Beha, but that’s just TMI.
What kind of reading is it to read three volumes of English poetry in two weeks? As he admits, he really wanted to take the time to read this poetry properly, but “as it was, I couldn’t take my time if I wanted to finish on schedule. So I pressed on, turning the pages like those of a novel or a biography, knowing all the while that poetry – especially the short lyric poetry that dominates the English tradition – isn’t meant to be read in this way.”
This admission is the self-condemnation of the whole project. The goal was simply to turn these thousands of pages over one by one during the course of one year. No matter that this is writing intended to be thought about, to be lingered over, to be understood. For Beha, it is simply pages to be turned.
It is the literary equivalent of a one week “if this is Tuesday, it must be Belgium” tour of fifteen countries of Europe. “Okay, folks,” says the guide as the bus pulls up to an imposing building, “this is the Louvre. We have a half-hour stop here.” The museum guide race-walks the group through several long corridors, pointing on the fly “that’s the Mona Lisa. If you glance through that door on your left, you can see our collection of Monet’s waterlily paintings. Over across the rotunda there you can see where our Egyptian antiquities are housed. Here’s the gift shop where you can spend the last fifteen minutes of your tour.” But at least when you get home, you can impress your friends by talking about “oh yes, we’ve seen Europe. Oh yes, the Louvre – magnificent, I especially loved the Mona Lisa, and Monet, and their wonderful Egyptian collections.”
If you have any curiosity about what is really in the Harvard Classics, the history of ideas they represent, their value to the human spirit, don’t waste time on The Whole Five Feet. You won’t get any of that. But if “doing” the Louvre or British Museum or MOMA in thirty minutes while listening to the babble of an immature, self-centered “guide” who has glanced at but never seen the art in question is your cup of tea, this book will be perfect for you.
March 21, 2010
Beha struck me as a memoirist who missed opportunity after opportunity in this memoir. He alluded to several interesting periods of his life, but he chose instead to share the random, the odd and the banal. For instance, I would have enjoyed much more on how the books he was reading resonated with his loss of faith (and the suffering said loss has obviously caused him) rather than the recounting of his trip to the sperm bank with his mom. I came away discontent, cranky, and only a little more knowledgeable about the Harvard Classics. I'd like to read his grandmother's biography, though. Maybe he'll write that next.
August 27, 2009
The author asks on page four of the Introduction, "why had I wanted to read these books in this way," referring, of course, to Harvard Classics Five Foot Shelf. While Mr. Beha states a number of reasons for his decision, the most compelling one for me was there were already two complete sets of the books in his life.
Apparently the Introduction to the Five Foot Shelf of Books a volume at the end of the shelf, captivated the authors imagination through multiple readings over many years, until at last, without a job, recovering from cancer, he makes the commitment to read the entire five feet in one year, and cracks open volume one. It is only after reading the entire set that he realizes there was a guide for reading, and that reading from start to finish was never the intention of the publisher or compiler.
What is interesting in this book, in spite of the fact that he went about the reading rather wrong headed, is the way Beha framed the events of his life by the volume he was currently reading. I do not mean to say that he found the answers to his particular problem du jour, but it did help to frame the death of a beloved aunt; a round with lime disease, a knee surgery, shame, doubt, and the discovery that the sperm he'd put in safe keeping for future possible use, was "unviable."
The Whole Five Feet was a pleasure to read, and life affirming.
How? What Mr. Beha discovered, and masterfully showed, was that the discussion of the big questions in life has been going on for a very a long time, well before our time. We add our bit, we die, and then the discussion goes on long after us. Still, the fact that comfort can be found in a book, any book, and especially a book written 1000 to 500 to as little a fifity years ago, that speaks directly to your situation today, is life affirming.
Long live the book!
Apparently the Introduction to the Five Foot Shelf of Books a volume at the end of the shelf, captivated the authors imagination through multiple readings over many years, until at last, without a job, recovering from cancer, he makes the commitment to read the entire five feet in one year, and cracks open volume one. It is only after reading the entire set that he realizes there was a guide for reading, and that reading from start to finish was never the intention of the publisher or compiler.
What is interesting in this book, in spite of the fact that he went about the reading rather wrong headed, is the way Beha framed the events of his life by the volume he was currently reading. I do not mean to say that he found the answers to his particular problem du jour, but it did help to frame the death of a beloved aunt; a round with lime disease, a knee surgery, shame, doubt, and the discovery that the sperm he'd put in safe keeping for future possible use, was "unviable."
The Whole Five Feet was a pleasure to read, and life affirming.
How? What Mr. Beha discovered, and masterfully showed, was that the discussion of the big questions in life has been going on for a very a long time, well before our time. We add our bit, we die, and then the discussion goes on long after us. Still, the fact that comfort can be found in a book, any book, and especially a book written 1000 to 500 to as little a fifity years ago, that speaks directly to your situation today, is life affirming.
Long live the book!
April 14, 2009
I thought this book was wonderful. Beha, in a chatty format, uses the great classics and ancient philosophers to help understand his own life. While some of the classics (mostly the Greeks) seem fresh and revelant, and others dry as dust, the book is never boring. I found tha parts wihch deal with Beha's own life most interesting, but I was surprised that I walked away wanting to read more of the classics myself. It is not necessary to have read any of the Harvard classics (or to have a Harvard education) in order to enjoy this touching journey of a young man coming to grips with lifes difficulties.
May 6, 2014
Every time I opened this book I thought about the morons on Amazon who gave this bad reviews because it wasn't a summary of the Harvard Classics. How lazy are people that are trying to get what amounts to a Cliff's Notes guide? Unbelievable. Also, can we please review the book we read, and not the book we wish we read?
I'm done ranting. This was a fantastic story of how the Classics impacted a man's life, and and how they wove themselves into his life's events. Well-written and extremely entertaining.
I'm done ranting. This was a fantastic story of how the Classics impacted a man's life, and and how they wove themselves into his life's events. Well-written and extremely entertaining.
April 19, 2024
Interesting to find out the history of the "Whole Five Feet", but I could've gotten any information on that end from Wikipedia. Otherwise, the book is uninteresting, on the whole. The ramblings of an undoubtedly bright and extremely privileged (family has 2 vacation homes, ski trips, Princeton, Jesuit high school, grew up in Manhattan) young man who has rejected his family's Catholic faith (without explaining why) and who goes so far as to include in the same chapter the details on why he banks his sperm while noting that his devoutly Catholic sister homeschools her children. One wonders how she felt about that.
If you're looking for any Truth here, you're not going to find it.
If you're looking for any Truth here, you're not going to find it.
February 3, 2022
When I started this book and saw that it had been written by a young, very privileged white man, I almost stopped reading. It starts out a little light and self-centered, which fed into every stereotype I have about privileged young white men. What could I possibly learn from someone like that?
I'm glad I kept reading, because Beha grew on me and corrected my stereotyped view of him. First, he wrote extensively about his warm, close family, and especially his Aunt Mimi, who was dying during his project to read the whole Harvard Classics in one year. He even helped care for Mimi, which considerably raised him in my estimation.
Second, he took his project very seriously, which I also admire. Some of the chapters are a little fluffy, but mostly Beha lets the events of his life inform his reading and vice-versa, and he does some pretty deep thinking. I especially liked his February chapter, during which he read, among other works, Augustine's Confessions and Thomas a Kempis's Imitation of Christ. Beha admits to having rejected the religion he was raised with, but he connects his reading to own suffering with a mysterious illness, his aunt's suffering, and the suffering that his grandmother tried to alleviate with a relic she gave him long ago. He makes the connection in a way I found very thoughtful.
In November, he draws his reader's attention to a beautiful Civil War letter included in the Classics, and ponders why average people are no longer able to express ourselves so well.
He ends with heartfelt praise of what modern minds can learn from the Classics and from the novel. (No novels are included in the original Harvard Classics; a collection specifically of novels was released later). In the end, I found myself enlightened and encouraged and grateful to to have stuck with this book.
Like my reviews? Check out my blog at http://www.kathrynbashaar.com/blog/
Author of The Saints Mistress https://camcatbooks.com/Books/T/The-S...
I'm glad I kept reading, because Beha grew on me and corrected my stereotyped view of him. First, he wrote extensively about his warm, close family, and especially his Aunt Mimi, who was dying during his project to read the whole Harvard Classics in one year. He even helped care for Mimi, which considerably raised him in my estimation.
Second, he took his project very seriously, which I also admire. Some of the chapters are a little fluffy, but mostly Beha lets the events of his life inform his reading and vice-versa, and he does some pretty deep thinking. I especially liked his February chapter, during which he read, among other works, Augustine's Confessions and Thomas a Kempis's Imitation of Christ. Beha admits to having rejected the religion he was raised with, but he connects his reading to own suffering with a mysterious illness, his aunt's suffering, and the suffering that his grandmother tried to alleviate with a relic she gave him long ago. He makes the connection in a way I found very thoughtful.
In November, he draws his reader's attention to a beautiful Civil War letter included in the Classics, and ponders why average people are no longer able to express ourselves so well.
He ends with heartfelt praise of what modern minds can learn from the Classics and from the novel. (No novels are included in the original Harvard Classics; a collection specifically of novels was released later). In the end, I found myself enlightened and encouraged and grateful to to have stuck with this book.
Like my reviews? Check out my blog at http://www.kathrynbashaar.com/blog/
Author of The Saints Mistress https://camcatbooks.com/Books/T/The-S...
May 23, 2009
After a promising start, every chapter of The Whole Five Feet starts to look the same, and that's when it becomes clear that what this book needs is more perspective.
Every chapter includes the highlights of each volume in the Harvard Classics, which mostly read like a student's notes from a Great Books class. Alongside these notes are some emotional stories from the author's life during the year this project took place, which are some of the more compelling portions of the book.
Occasionally, an attempt is made to connect the two streams, but it isn't always successful, and that's where the main problem is. The author concedes that by running so quickly through these literature classics, there is little time to absorb and consider. But by having so little time for reflection, it becomes nearly impossible to think more broadly about themes from the reading and themes from life and how they might connect, and so the two streams remain isolated. Perhaps the authors as well as readers of this book were overly optimistic about the possibility of the project resulting in personal revelations, but sometimes those things only emerge through time, and so I was left wondering whether the book was written too soon.
If the author decided to revisit this project in 40 or 50 years, perhaps at a more leisurely pace, I could definitely see some intriguing thoughts arising. As it is however, The Whole Five Feet is a somewhat aimless though entertaining read. At worst, it's at least a good run-through of the great books, which helped to add a few titles to my reading list.
Every chapter includes the highlights of each volume in the Harvard Classics, which mostly read like a student's notes from a Great Books class. Alongside these notes are some emotional stories from the author's life during the year this project took place, which are some of the more compelling portions of the book.
Occasionally, an attempt is made to connect the two streams, but it isn't always successful, and that's where the main problem is. The author concedes that by running so quickly through these literature classics, there is little time to absorb and consider. But by having so little time for reflection, it becomes nearly impossible to think more broadly about themes from the reading and themes from life and how they might connect, and so the two streams remain isolated. Perhaps the authors as well as readers of this book were overly optimistic about the possibility of the project resulting in personal revelations, but sometimes those things only emerge through time, and so I was left wondering whether the book was written too soon.
If the author decided to revisit this project in 40 or 50 years, perhaps at a more leisurely pace, I could definitely see some intriguing thoughts arising. As it is however, The Whole Five Feet is a somewhat aimless though entertaining read. At worst, it's at least a good run-through of the great books, which helped to add a few titles to my reading list.
January 1, 2025
I can't say that The Whole Five Feet was brilliant—I have a feeling it was an altogether average memoir. Since it's about an author entering his late 20s, without solid career aspirations, with personal and family medical issues, and with a love for the classics, I found the author's story very relatable, and thus all the more engaging.
November 10, 2023
I enjoyed this, enjoyed learning about how the Harvard Classics came to be, what they were meant for, etc. I enjoyed Beha's voice, his musings, thoughts, the links he made between the works, the world, what the world has lost in terms of attention spans and culture, about himself, the illnesses he suffered through, his life, and his family. I don't think the family fully came alive as I expected them to, but reading this was time well spent, educational, learned, sometimes funny.
June 30, 2012
Sometimes I feel guilty about the hours I spend reading - opportunity-cost of other things I should be doing. So, I loved when this author posed the question, "why read?" After spending a year with the 51 volumes of the Harvard Classics, he poses that we don't read for knowledge (Socrates says that is futile) and we don't read for pleasure (not all is pleasurable), but we read so we can participate in the conversation of humanity. By reading, we become bigger and more complete than a unit of one individual.
As the author faced cancer, the death of a beloved Aunt, another illness, and the birth of a nephew he was asking himself life's toughest questions. He realized that all the authors he was reading had struggled through the same questions about life. The author feels defeated by reality and referencing "Don Quixote" thinks, "What are we to do with a world that gives us basins, when we want to live in a world of enchanted helmets". Beha comments a lot about how the world is in pain...must we pay for our happiness with tears? He notes that the question of death can't be answered and perhaps wisdom is accepting that limit: mankind, however, always struggles to look beyond it (Dante's Inferno). He decides that if you know where to look perhaps there is some compensation for hardships, and some consolation for brevity of life. I found the most interesting part of the book to be when the author explores his loss of faith: He had read Emmerson concluding the "gigantic hand of the cosmos" must be true, and he had read Augustine's conclusion that there is a hidden order to the world that must be God. But, Beha found no consolation in faith even in his worst illness and therefore concluded that faith was not available to him, so the world must really be unordered or mane violently ordered. Beha's world view is that there is no order but the one we make (he notes literature that seems to document the re-ordering of society).
When I considered our worlds famous ancient authors as young men considering life's questions as Beha did, I felt more than ever that it is not a waste of time to participate in the conversations of humanity by reading...it's like being in a multi-century book club.
As the author faced cancer, the death of a beloved Aunt, another illness, and the birth of a nephew he was asking himself life's toughest questions. He realized that all the authors he was reading had struggled through the same questions about life. The author feels defeated by reality and referencing "Don Quixote" thinks, "What are we to do with a world that gives us basins, when we want to live in a world of enchanted helmets". Beha comments a lot about how the world is in pain...must we pay for our happiness with tears? He notes that the question of death can't be answered and perhaps wisdom is accepting that limit: mankind, however, always struggles to look beyond it (Dante's Inferno). He decides that if you know where to look perhaps there is some compensation for hardships, and some consolation for brevity of life. I found the most interesting part of the book to be when the author explores his loss of faith: He had read Emmerson concluding the "gigantic hand of the cosmos" must be true, and he had read Augustine's conclusion that there is a hidden order to the world that must be God. But, Beha found no consolation in faith even in his worst illness and therefore concluded that faith was not available to him, so the world must really be unordered or mane violently ordered. Beha's world view is that there is no order but the one we make (he notes literature that seems to document the re-ordering of society).
When I considered our worlds famous ancient authors as young men considering life's questions as Beha did, I felt more than ever that it is not a waste of time to participate in the conversations of humanity by reading...it's like being in a multi-century book club.
Want to read
October 3, 2009I picked this up over lunch.. he co-selected stories with JCO in a collection I really liked muchly.. so far it's an interesting historical-ish read. Interrupted by the braying jackal laughter of the power broker crowd that wandered into my lunchtime reading area.. I wonder how Mr. Beha would have felt had I turned his book into a murder weapon.. it was a close call.
October 19, 2022
I recently was at the Catholic Imagination Conference in Dallas where Christopher Beha was speaking (how I learned about this book) and also reading from his book The Index of Self-Destructive Acts. Beha himself said this wasn't his favorite of his own works, but because I have the Five Foot Shelf and have made a small dent into reading through it myself, this book became all the more interesting to me.
February 24, 2023
I am so glad I picked this book up
I have started the Harvard Classics but I haven't finished one volume yet. I have read many different works that are in them. Getting an overview of them in this book was just what I was hoping for! Getting extra insight into how these books were meant to be works that live, was demonstrated in the life of the author.
I have started the Harvard Classics but I haven't finished one volume yet. I have read many different works that are in them. Getting an overview of them in this book was just what I was hoping for! Getting extra insight into how these books were meant to be works that live, was demonstrated in the life of the author.
March 22, 2025
Disappointed. I expected more. Perhaps I measured it by The Great Books of the Western World? No, I think there was less about the narrator’s life as he worked his way through the volumes (Harvard Classics) than I wanted. Mostly, he focused on his ties to his grandmother and his fight with a truly horrific health condition.
May 30, 2019
Well written, but too much navel gazing.
July 23, 2019
Every reader finds himself. The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself.
– Marcel Proust, Time Regained
In 1909 Charles Eliot, the recently retired president of Harvard, presented his fifty-one volume anthology, which became known as the Harvard Classics, or more colloquially The Five Foot Bookshelf. The set contains the works which Eliot considered the foundation of a good liberal education, with selections from literature, history, religion, drama, science, and politics. The series was a great success and was widely influential in its time. Though the books themselves are little read today, many of the selections within them retain their status as classics of world literature. Christopher Beha decided that he would read the entire set, from end to end, in one year, and write a book about it.
Books like this hold an appeal for me. By following the authors as they examine the great works, and gaining an understanding of how they interpret them, I can appreciate both the texts themselves and the larger context into which analysis places them. Who were the authors writing for, what were their social and cultural surroundings, why were their characters cast the way they were, and how were the works originally received when they were published?
I previously read A.J. Jacobs’ The Know-It-All, about his quest to read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica, and both that book and this one have similar structures, in that the authors frequently abandon their main subject and spend page after page talking about their personal lives. The similarities were such that I wondered if this was something pressed on them by their agents or editors, as if they were told, “Readers have short attention spans and get bored easily. You have to punch it up and add heart warming human interest stories.” In Know-It-All we get to read about the author and his wife’s quest to conceive a child, and in this one we meet the extended family, aunts, cousins, nieces and nephews, fiancées, and dead grandparents, plus more than you ever wanted to know about his health issues. He described so many doctor’s visits that it made me think of a line by Katherine Helmond in the movie Brazil, “My complications had complications.”
The best parts of both books are when the authors stay on topic. Encyclopedia Britannica has a lifetime’s worth of fascinating articles to consider, both for their content and for the historical and social settings that influenced their authors. In this book the textual criticism is very good, when Beha sticks with it. His discussions of why this set of books was created and how its selections were made provide insights into cultural life at the start of the 20th century. Cicero, Dante, Faust, Cervantes, and other famous authors are well covered, and even the more off-beat topics were interesting, such as what we can learn from fairy tales and fables, and the value of early scientific and political works for our own day. He has a passion for Emerson and Wordsworth, and his discussions of them are well written and insightful.
I can even forgive him for thinking that the low point of the entire fifty-one books was Origin of Species. I was stricken when I read that because, for me, Darwin’s book was a life changing experience as he methodically laid out a convincing case for the evidence of evolution by natural selection. Alas. At least we agreed on Montaigne and Pascal. He also made me want to read R.H. Dana’s Two Years Before the Mast, and Frank Aretas Haskell’s The Battle of Gettysburg. In fact, I added a number of the works he describes to my ever-growing list of books to read.
What can we learn from reading the Classics? They have value above and beyond the stories they tell and the facts they present. “I had come to a much greater understanding of...culture as internal improvement, rather than as a set of characteristics or a collection of knowledge.” (p. 232) From many different perspectives the books address what it means to be an educated person, to compassionately view human nature and to dispassionately analyze evidence. “I was learning more about how to be in the world than I was any particular facts or figures.” (p. 197)
There is another important point that these works make, and Beha’s observations reminded me of a poem by e.e. cummings, called Plato Told:
What did they tell him? That he was going to die. We are all going to die. (The part about the Sixth Avenue El is a reference to New York City’s elevated railway lines, which were torn down in the 1930s and the scrap sold to Japan, where it was melted down into munitions for the coming war.)
Beha writes, “the more I read, the clearer it became that confronting the problem of death – a problem that will never go away – is the reason the classics exist.” (p. 273) He also quotes Montaigne, who wrote “a great deal about the infirmity of the body and the prospect of mortality. ‘To philosophize,’ he states with a beautiful bluntness in the title of one essay, ‘is to learne [sic] how to die.'” (p. 177)
It sounds grim, but it is a truth that we must all face. Running away from it is a child’s game, a sign of self deception. “Our most pressing questions – Why must we die? What is death really like? How are we to live in the face of death? – can never be answered. One mark of wisdom, then, may be the ability to accept this limit to our knowledge.” (p. 117) Knowing that our days are few, and accepting that fact, can grant us a measure of dignity and serenity, and increase our engagement with life in the time that is given to us.
So, did reading about Beha’s adventure with the Classics make me want to join him? Not really, although I will read or re-read some of the selections individually. The translations he quotes from occasionally have a heavy, lumbering Victorian feel, and there are certainly more modern alternatives. Some of the works hold little interest for me, and you’d have to hold a gun to my head to get me to ever read Pilgrim’s Progress again. As in so much of life, however, it is the journey, not the destination, that is important. Reading Beha reading the Classics gave me a lot to think about in terms of what matters in life, and what it means to live well. “If it is true that the goal is intellectual self-sufficiency, it’s also true that we need the wisdom of those who came before, if only to teach us how eventually to do without it.” (p. 233)
If he had stuck to his analyses of the these works I would have enjoyed this book more. He actually makes note of this at the very end, saying “I found consolation in living a life that included these books. And so the book I finally did write wasn’t a book about reading so much as a book about the life of one reader. It was a book about the instruments that made it possible for me to read myself.” (p. 273) Fair enough, I understand what he is saying, but when he left the Classics to spend time writing about his own life he left the universal and got bogged down in the particular. He should have kept his gaze higher.
– Marcel Proust, Time Regained
In 1909 Charles Eliot, the recently retired president of Harvard, presented his fifty-one volume anthology, which became known as the Harvard Classics, or more colloquially The Five Foot Bookshelf. The set contains the works which Eliot considered the foundation of a good liberal education, with selections from literature, history, religion, drama, science, and politics. The series was a great success and was widely influential in its time. Though the books themselves are little read today, many of the selections within them retain their status as classics of world literature. Christopher Beha decided that he would read the entire set, from end to end, in one year, and write a book about it.
Books like this hold an appeal for me. By following the authors as they examine the great works, and gaining an understanding of how they interpret them, I can appreciate both the texts themselves and the larger context into which analysis places them. Who were the authors writing for, what were their social and cultural surroundings, why were their characters cast the way they were, and how were the works originally received when they were published?
I previously read A.J. Jacobs’ The Know-It-All, about his quest to read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica, and both that book and this one have similar structures, in that the authors frequently abandon their main subject and spend page after page talking about their personal lives. The similarities were such that I wondered if this was something pressed on them by their agents or editors, as if they were told, “Readers have short attention spans and get bored easily. You have to punch it up and add heart warming human interest stories.” In Know-It-All we get to read about the author and his wife’s quest to conceive a child, and in this one we meet the extended family, aunts, cousins, nieces and nephews, fiancées, and dead grandparents, plus more than you ever wanted to know about his health issues. He described so many doctor’s visits that it made me think of a line by Katherine Helmond in the movie Brazil, “My complications had complications.”
The best parts of both books are when the authors stay on topic. Encyclopedia Britannica has a lifetime’s worth of fascinating articles to consider, both for their content and for the historical and social settings that influenced their authors. In this book the textual criticism is very good, when Beha sticks with it. His discussions of why this set of books was created and how its selections were made provide insights into cultural life at the start of the 20th century. Cicero, Dante, Faust, Cervantes, and other famous authors are well covered, and even the more off-beat topics were interesting, such as what we can learn from fairy tales and fables, and the value of early scientific and political works for our own day. He has a passion for Emerson and Wordsworth, and his discussions of them are well written and insightful.
I can even forgive him for thinking that the low point of the entire fifty-one books was Origin of Species. I was stricken when I read that because, for me, Darwin’s book was a life changing experience as he methodically laid out a convincing case for the evidence of evolution by natural selection. Alas. At least we agreed on Montaigne and Pascal. He also made me want to read R.H. Dana’s Two Years Before the Mast, and Frank Aretas Haskell’s The Battle of Gettysburg. In fact, I added a number of the works he describes to my ever-growing list of books to read.
What can we learn from reading the Classics? They have value above and beyond the stories they tell and the facts they present. “I had come to a much greater understanding of...culture as internal improvement, rather than as a set of characteristics or a collection of knowledge.” (p. 232) From many different perspectives the books address what it means to be an educated person, to compassionately view human nature and to dispassionately analyze evidence. “I was learning more about how to be in the world than I was any particular facts or figures.” (p. 197)
There is another important point that these works make, and Beha’s observations reminded me of a poem by e.e. cummings, called Plato Told:
plato told
him:he couldn't
believe it(jesus
told him;he
wouldn't believe
it)lao
tsze
certainly told
him, and general
(yes
mam)
sherman;
and even
(believe it
or
not)you
told him:i told
him; we told him
(he didn't believe it, no
sir)it took
a nipponized bit of
the old sixth
avenue
el;in the top of his head :to tell
him
What did they tell him? That he was going to die. We are all going to die. (The part about the Sixth Avenue El is a reference to New York City’s elevated railway lines, which were torn down in the 1930s and the scrap sold to Japan, where it was melted down into munitions for the coming war.)
Beha writes, “the more I read, the clearer it became that confronting the problem of death – a problem that will never go away – is the reason the classics exist.” (p. 273) He also quotes Montaigne, who wrote “a great deal about the infirmity of the body and the prospect of mortality. ‘To philosophize,’ he states with a beautiful bluntness in the title of one essay, ‘is to learne [sic] how to die.'” (p. 177)
It sounds grim, but it is a truth that we must all face. Running away from it is a child’s game, a sign of self deception. “Our most pressing questions – Why must we die? What is death really like? How are we to live in the face of death? – can never be answered. One mark of wisdom, then, may be the ability to accept this limit to our knowledge.” (p. 117) Knowing that our days are few, and accepting that fact, can grant us a measure of dignity and serenity, and increase our engagement with life in the time that is given to us.
So, did reading about Beha’s adventure with the Classics make me want to join him? Not really, although I will read or re-read some of the selections individually. The translations he quotes from occasionally have a heavy, lumbering Victorian feel, and there are certainly more modern alternatives. Some of the works hold little interest for me, and you’d have to hold a gun to my head to get me to ever read Pilgrim’s Progress again. As in so much of life, however, it is the journey, not the destination, that is important. Reading Beha reading the Classics gave me a lot to think about in terms of what matters in life, and what it means to live well. “If it is true that the goal is intellectual self-sufficiency, it’s also true that we need the wisdom of those who came before, if only to teach us how eventually to do without it.” (p. 233)
If he had stuck to his analyses of the these works I would have enjoyed this book more. He actually makes note of this at the very end, saying “I found consolation in living a life that included these books. And so the book I finally did write wasn’t a book about reading so much as a book about the life of one reader. It was a book about the instruments that made it possible for me to read myself.” (p. 273) Fair enough, I understand what he is saying, but when he left the Classics to spend time writing about his own life he left the universal and got bogged down in the particular. He should have kept his gaze higher.
November 4, 2011
The Harvard Classics, or "The Five Foot Shelf," is a series of books originally compiled in the early part of the 20th century with the express intent of bringing culture to the masses. While this sort of "charitable" educational project can be seen as elitist, I like to think that in this case it was not. By the early 1900's, the Classical education of yore was going out of style, but quite a few people were loathe to see it go. So, the president of Harvard and a few others compiled an immense 22,000 pages of "classics" to help average people educate themselves in their free time. There are no novels in this collection, as at the time they were considered extremely accessible and popular.
Christopher Beha was in his early 20's, living with his parents and just entering his 5th year of remission from cancer when he decided to tackle a task he had kept in the back of his mind for some time: read through the entire Five Foot Shelf in one year and write a book about it. His initial intention was something lighthearted and a bit on the fluffy side, but a confluence of real life events pushed him in another direction. The onset of Lyme disease and a death in the family created a more somber, reflective tone for his book than he originally intended (I'm not postulating, he says so in the book!). This tone works, for the most part, because while it tackles sadness and worry, it doesn't allow those things to bog down the actual journey through the books. Is it occasionally a bit too philosophical and serendipitous? Sure, but that's generally how memoirs focusing on reading work; everyone whose written one always seems to find the right book at just the right time.
I wouldn't call this book a favorite, but I enjoyed it. Christopher Beha has a comfortable, easy way of telling a story and keeping sadness from becoming maudlin or sentimental. The overviews of the books were interesting, though by no means comprehensive; really, it's not the books that are the point, but how the books affected Beha for the year he devoted to them. And he did manage to read the whole series in a year, which is impressive.
Christopher Beha was in his early 20's, living with his parents and just entering his 5th year of remission from cancer when he decided to tackle a task he had kept in the back of his mind for some time: read through the entire Five Foot Shelf in one year and write a book about it. His initial intention was something lighthearted and a bit on the fluffy side, but a confluence of real life events pushed him in another direction. The onset of Lyme disease and a death in the family created a more somber, reflective tone for his book than he originally intended (I'm not postulating, he says so in the book!). This tone works, for the most part, because while it tackles sadness and worry, it doesn't allow those things to bog down the actual journey through the books. Is it occasionally a bit too philosophical and serendipitous? Sure, but that's generally how memoirs focusing on reading work; everyone whose written one always seems to find the right book at just the right time.
I wouldn't call this book a favorite, but I enjoyed it. Christopher Beha has a comfortable, easy way of telling a story and keeping sadness from becoming maudlin or sentimental. The overviews of the books were interesting, though by no means comprehensive; really, it's not the books that are the point, but how the books affected Beha for the year he devoted to them. And he did manage to read the whole series in a year, which is impressive.
June 29, 2009
"“In much wisdom is much grief,” counsels the book of Ecclesiastes, and in Christopher R. Beha’s tender intellectual memoir, we find plenty of both. By the time he set out to read all 51 volumes of the Harvard Classics — known as the Five-Foot Shelf — Beha had already survived blood cancer and seen his identical twin brother nearly die after a car accident. And in a year that would take Beha from ancient Greece to the 20th century, illness and death returned once more, reminding him that no amount of learning can efface what Pascal called the “eternal silence of these infinite spaces.” "
So begins the New York Times Sunday Book Review of The Whole Five Feet. While I found his own story most compelling, I also enjoyed Beha's discussion of the Harvard Classics, and feel drawn to read some of them myself. This book is smart,touching, amusing and thought provoking. I read it for a book club and found that it made for very interesting discussions. Everyone liked it, but for different reasons. This book is a real winner. I highly recommend it.
So begins the New York Times Sunday Book Review of The Whole Five Feet. While I found his own story most compelling, I also enjoyed Beha's discussion of the Harvard Classics, and feel drawn to read some of them myself. This book is smart,touching, amusing and thought provoking. I read it for a book club and found that it made for very interesting discussions. Everyone liked it, but for different reasons. This book is a real winner. I highly recommend it.
July 24, 2009
I liked this book a great deal. Beha combines his reading with the events of his life during the year he was reading the great books. He looks at the way what he is reading effects his life and vice versa.
I had already read most of the works included in the great books, and have always felt that I am not well educated despite my degree and years of reading. I have always been drawn to the classics and read several in the original Latin during my 3 years of Latin in school. Yet, when I compared my knowledge with those I read about, I felt a mere dabbler in the pool of learning.
Beha talked about the different approached to learning and education over time. The difference between the model used by Charles Elliot (the compiler of the Great Books) and the education of today is like day and night. All and all a fascinating read.
I had already read most of the works included in the great books, and have always felt that I am not well educated despite my degree and years of reading. I have always been drawn to the classics and read several in the original Latin during my 3 years of Latin in school. Yet, when I compared my knowledge with those I read about, I felt a mere dabbler in the pool of learning.
Beha talked about the different approached to learning and education over time. The difference between the model used by Charles Elliot (the compiler of the Great Books) and the education of today is like day and night. All and all a fascinating read.
July 14, 2009
I must say, I'm a little bit disappointed that Beha doesn't include more personal reflections. Instead, it's turning out to be more of a catalog of the books in the Harvard Classics collection and why they were included. I was really hoping for more on what the Great Books taught him about life, death, and pretty much everything else.
June 16, 2011
Pleasantly more personal and interesting than I thought it would be. And one more voice attesting to the value of a liberal arts education.
June 30, 2009
I liked this- and a fairly quick read too. I haven't read most of the books he talks about, so it is fun to see a little of what they are about and inspires me to read more "classics" :)
November 25, 2017
This memoir covers a year in the life of the author. At the age of 27, he quit his job and moved back home to live with his parents. Apparently finding himself with quite a bit of time on his hands (maybe quitting your job isn't the answer to life's questions), he determined to read through the Harvard Classics collection in the year.
The Harvard Classics was a collection of classic literature compiled at the turn of the 20th century by the president of Harvard University and sold by subscription. The intent (other than capitalism) was to provide those who could not attend college with a well-rounded education by reading through classic books. It was referred to as "the five-foot shelf" as the volumes took up approximately that much space.
The book is partly a description of the author's life during that year, encompassing deaths, births, and marriages in his extended family, as well as his own health issues. The rest of the book consists of book reports of selected works in the Harvard Classics. As book reports go, they're not too bad, depending on your interest in the works Beha chooses to cover. Some I enjoyed, others not as much.
I picked this up, because, like the author, I determined to read the "whole five feet", although I didn't set a year time limit on myself. This past year I've read a few inches--not as much as I thought I would, for various reasons. And some I started, I doubt I will go back to. (Milton--blech. Maybe if I were 27 again, I'd tackle it.)
The Harvard Classics was a collection of classic literature compiled at the turn of the 20th century by the president of Harvard University and sold by subscription. The intent (other than capitalism) was to provide those who could not attend college with a well-rounded education by reading through classic books. It was referred to as "the five-foot shelf" as the volumes took up approximately that much space.
The book is partly a description of the author's life during that year, encompassing deaths, births, and marriages in his extended family, as well as his own health issues. The rest of the book consists of book reports of selected works in the Harvard Classics. As book reports go, they're not too bad, depending on your interest in the works Beha chooses to cover. Some I enjoyed, others not as much.
I picked this up, because, like the author, I determined to read the "whole five feet", although I didn't set a year time limit on myself. This past year I've read a few inches--not as much as I thought I would, for various reasons. And some I started, I doubt I will go back to. (Milton--blech. Maybe if I were 27 again, I'd tackle it.)
March 20, 2025
The three star rating is not quite fair, since reading this has set my actual real life into a new trajectory which would mean that this book is technically life changing! So I do recommend it quite highly. But it's the great works Beha is writing about, rather than Beha himself that has done it.
The memoir sections felt honest and even quite vulnerable. My main issue with them was that Beha intentionally set out to write this book before he even began to read the Five Feet. It felt awfully self-conscious. It's not until the Afterword that he finally tells us that this book in fact isn't the book he set out to write. He intended it to be comedic. But the year in which he read these books turned out to be anything but comedic, so the tone of the book had to change in response. Knowing this altered the whole thing for me for the better.
But it is the so-called Great Classics themselves which have called to me via this book. Beha has brought them to life just enough for me to expand my horizons enormously and desire to read so many works I never considered reading before (Two Years Before the Mast, anyone? Autobiography by John Stuart Mill? I genuinely want to read these and many more). Beha voices some concern over the almost total break with past thinkers in this 21st century. I agree. I have seen lots of nostalgia for past 'vibes', but so little engagement with thought and philosophy from centuries gone. The world will do what the world does; but this individual Me wants to get to know the past better.
The memoir sections felt honest and even quite vulnerable. My main issue with them was that Beha intentionally set out to write this book before he even began to read the Five Feet. It felt awfully self-conscious. It's not until the Afterword that he finally tells us that this book in fact isn't the book he set out to write. He intended it to be comedic. But the year in which he read these books turned out to be anything but comedic, so the tone of the book had to change in response. Knowing this altered the whole thing for me for the better.
But it is the so-called Great Classics themselves which have called to me via this book. Beha has brought them to life just enough for me to expand my horizons enormously and desire to read so many works I never considered reading before (Two Years Before the Mast, anyone? Autobiography by John Stuart Mill? I genuinely want to read these and many more). Beha voices some concern over the almost total break with past thinkers in this 21st century. I agree. I have seen lots of nostalgia for past 'vibes', but so little engagement with thought and philosophy from centuries gone. The world will do what the world does; but this individual Me wants to get to know the past better.
December 25, 2025
A lovely book for the close of the year (given to me by my sister, a classmate of Beha's, as she was restructuring her library and had set this one aside for its potential interest to me). I was surprised to love so much this near-superficial grappling with an early-twentieth-century canon of Western writings, but it was this very inexpert-feeling, sophomoric struggling of our reader that was so engaging and endearing, in his mid-twenties at the time, through life and literature by way of death, illness, and religion, most prominently. I find it difficult to articulate the feeling the memoir component of this story gave me: something like embarrassment, with a flick of indulgence, and a bit like I wanted to pat him on the head when the story was over. Paternal, perhaps? This sensation is as hard to explain as it is to feel, but ultimately it gave me hope and happiness to experience, and I believe it is borne of Chris Beha's willingness to expose himself as a student, unrepentantly, if for a year, through the months of it and doing his level best to ignore the turn of the seasons through those months and the rhythms of life that nevertheless impose themselves on his waking mind and try to shake him by the lapels. Good thing at the end of the five feet he looks forward to walking past the shelf into his own life.
July 21, 2018
The author, during a difficult period in life, decides to undergo the daunting challenge of reading the entirety of the Harvard classics in one year. The author is an Ivy League educated man in English, but even to someone like him it would be challenging. The book follows him through his year with the classics and he highlights sections of those classics that he thought were meaningful to his own life. This is where I have some concerns. The author had a very difficult year. Loosing a close family member and battling his own health issues, the story become more of a memoir of his year than a story of the classics. Each chapter starts with the books read that month, but throughout the chapter many of the titles are not mentioned at all. Not because they are necessarily bad books, they just don’t fit into his life.
I would not consider myself well versed in the classics, especially the ones in this set, but there were names and titles I recognized and was excited to hear his perspective, only to have then unmentioned.
Over all the book was a good read and I would recommend it to someone wanting to read a memoir, but not to someone who wants an accurate covering of the Harvard classics.
I would not consider myself well versed in the classics, especially the ones in this set, but there were names and titles I recognized and was excited to hear his perspective, only to have then unmentioned.
Over all the book was a good read and I would recommend it to someone wanting to read a memoir, but not to someone who wants an accurate covering of the Harvard classics.
September 27, 2020
In 2009 Christopher Beha published through Grove Press “The Whole Five Feet: What the Great Books Taught Me About Life, Death and Pretty Much Everything Else.” Chris decided in his late 20’s to read all the Great Harvard Classics books that were on 5 feet of book case shelving in his parents’ home. He divided the books into groups and made a personal commitment to read one book group per month for one year. His book is a memoir and a wonderful reflection on how his grandmother’s Harvard Classics helped him refocus his life after struggles over family deaths, confounding debts, and spiritual conflicts with his faith and Catholic traditions. In his words: “Life was teaching me about these books, just as much as the books were teaching me about life,.” His experience is inspiring and very instructive for people who collect, read, and love great books. (L)
January 19, 2023
This is much more than a book about books or even a book about reading books. This book is about how reading the books affected the reader (Christopher Beha) and how the books he was reading intersected with what was happening in his life during that year. He discusses life, illness, goals, hurdles....and the books in such a conversational way that you feel that you can almost turn and ask him a question or give him a comforting touch.
This book could have easily slid into a pedantic, lecturing tone. That it doesn't and leaves the reader wanting to know more, not just about the books and authors he talks/writes about but the author himself. I will be adding some of the titles to my reading list...if they're not already there.
Thank you, Christopher, for taking me on your year-long journey and giving me a peek into your life. Wish I could have known Mimi.
This book could have easily slid into a pedantic, lecturing tone. That it doesn't and leaves the reader wanting to know more, not just about the books and authors he talks/writes about but the author himself. I will be adding some of the titles to my reading list...if they're not already there.
Thank you, Christopher, for taking me on your year-long journey and giving me a peek into your life. Wish I could have known Mimi.
February 29, 2020
The concept of reading the entire collection of the Harvard Classics in one year fascinated me. These books contain the writings of politicians, scientists, poets, essayists, theologians and philosophers. (Fiction is mostly reserved for a whole other collection.) The collection was put together by Charles Eliot, the president of Harvard in the late 1800s and early 1900s. His goal was to establish a "five-foot shelf" of materials that any person could read in order to educate and cultivate them selves. Beha decided to read the books in order over the course of what proved to be a very challenging year in terms of his life. His readings come the backdrop to loss, illness, family and hope. His reflections on his life and these "great books" are worth the read.
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