Life, 1922-11-23 · page 29 of 36
Life — November 23, 1922 — page 29: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page is primarily **advertising disguised as editorial content**—a promotional piece for Dr. Charles W. Eliot's "Five-Foot Shelf of Books," a famous curated library collection. The opening narrative references **Benjamin Franklin**, using him as an aspirational figure: a self-made man who achieved success through systematic self-education via great books. The implicit message: you too can rise from poverty to prominence through disciplined reading. The satirical angle—typical of Life's style—gently mocks American self-improvement culture and social climbing. The headline's progression ("Poor at twenty; Rich at forty; Internationally famous at fifty") is tongue-in-cheek about upward mobility mythology, though presented as inspirational. The illustrations show contrasting scenes: a solitary Franklin-like figure in period dress, and a crowded celebration with civic monuments, visualizing the promised trajectory from obscurity to prominence. **This is fundamentally a mail-order advertisement**, leveraging aspirational messaging and celebrity endorsement (Harvard president Eliot) to sell a standardized reading course to middle-class Americans seeking self-improvement.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Louse, erican d and oss or prior Poor at twenty; Rich at forty; Internationally famous at fifty You are invited to have FREE a booklet that tells what few great books make a man think straight and talk well lin walked through the streets of Philadelphia alone. Yet at forty he was independent; at fifty his com- pany was eagerly sought by the leaders of two continents. What was the secret of such phenomenal success? Some- thing mysterious? Not at all. His secret was nothing more than this: Every day of his life he added a part of some other man’s knowledge to his own. He picked the few really great mind-building books and read them system- atically a few minutes every day. Pi friendless, with no education, Benjamin Frank- Are you bigger to-day than yesterday You have so few minutes in the day for reading; so few days in a busy life. Will you spend them all with the gossip of the newspapers, or the mere entertainment of fiction? Or will you, like Franklin, start now to make the great thinkers of the world your servants? Will you increase your own brain power by adding their brain power to it? What are the few great books—biographies, histories, novels, dramas, poems, books of science and travel, philos- ophy and religion, that have in them the power to make of their readers men who can think clearly and talk inter- estingly—men who will not only be ambitious for succe: Send for This Free Booklet That Gives Dr. Eliot’s Own Plan of Reading but who will have acquired the broadness of vision neces- sary to achieve it? All of these questions, so vital to you, are answered in the free booklet pictured below. You can have a copy of it for the asking. In it Dr. Charles W. Eliot, who was for forty years president of Harvard University, gives his own plan of reading. In it are described the contents, plan, Dr. Eliot’s Five-Foot Shelf of Books Every well-informed man and woman should know about this famous library. The free book tells about it—how Dr. Eliot has put into his Five-Foot Shelf “‘the essentials of a liberal education”; how he has so arranged it that even “fifteen minutes a day" are enough; how, in pleasant _mo- ments of spare time, by using the reading courses Dr. Eliot has provided for you, you can get the knowledge of litera- ture and life that every university strives to give. Every reader of Life is invited to have a copy of this handsome and entertaining free book. Merely clip the coupon and mail it today. |p. F. coutier & son comPANY 416 West Thirteenth Street, New York Mail me the free book.. “Fifteen Minutes a Day,’ telling about the Five-Foot Shelf of Boos, and containing the valuable article by Dr. Eliot on what and how to read for ‘a lberal education, comicbooks.com | | | | |