After undergoing a series of crises and learning that his grandmother had used the Harvard Classics to educate herself during the Great Depression, Christopher Beha vows to read the entire Five-Foot Shelf over the course of the next year. As he passes from St. Augustine's Confessions to Don Quixote and essays by Cicero, Emerson, and Thoreau, Beha notes that the authors are grappling with the same questions he faces: What is the purpose of life? Beha's inspirational mix of memoir and intellectual excursion is a powerful testament to what great books can teach us about how to live our own lives.