Paula Marantz Cohen

A Year of 15-Minute Daily Doses From the Harvard Classics

Pursuing a liberal education with disciplined attention to Cicero, Swift, Hume and others on the ‘five-foot shelf.’

By PAULA MARANTZ COHEN

Dec. 26, 2014 6:37 p.m. ET

For years, I’ve had a set of the Harvard Classics in my study: 50 volumes of “great works” bound in faded green cloth—the “Five-Foot Shelf,” as the collection was called when it was first published in 1910. Our set was left to us by my husband’s aunt. She acquired it secondhand during the Great Depression and willed it to us because we had a literary bent. It is unclear whether she ever looked at it. Despite our literary bent, we let it gather dust.

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“Gets a Life has an emotional honesty and moments of real wisdom, cleverly packaged as mere entertainment. I recommend giving it a try. You’ll laugh, and you may well learn something.” – Katie Haegele, Philly.com

Read the full review here.

Moira Hodgson of the Wall Street Journal writes:

.“Ms. Cohen has created a sympathetic character in Suzanne, her droll, self-deprecating and often hapless heroine, who is searching for her Mr. Darcy. . . .Ms. Cohen is a perceptive, comic writer and makes getting there a good deal of fun.”

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See the full review of Suzanne Davis Gets a Life here.

Recent post on the Huffington Post: Why Be a Nurse?

A final column, Telling Stories About Teaching, for The American Scholar.

A recent column honoring the life of Glenn Hobson, master tennis coach and teacher.