Showing results by author "Christopher Beha" in All Categories

Brought to you by Penguin. What can I know? What must I do? What may I hope? Twenty-five years ago, celebrated author Christopher Beha gave up on God. After reading Bertrand Russell’s classic text Why I Am Not a Christian, he became a committed atheist, certain that his days of belief were...

The day Sam Waxworth arrives in New York to write for The Interviewer, a street-corner preacher declares that the world is coming to an end. A sports statistician, data journalist, and newly minted media celebrity who correctly forecasted every outcome of the 2008 election, Sam’s familiar with predicting the future. But when projection meets reality, things turn complicated. Sam’s editor sends him to profile disgraced political columnist Frank Doyle.

Charlie Blakeman is living in New York, on Washington Square, struggling to write his second novel and floundering, when his college love, Sophie Wilder, returns to his life. Sophie, too, is struggling, though Charlie isn’t sure why. They’ve spoken only rarely since falling out a decade before. Now Sophie begins to tell Charlie the story of her life since then, particularly the days she spent taking care of a dying man with his own terrible past and the difficult decision he presented her with.

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).