Late Life with Socrates

TK-page paperback / 4.25" x 7" / ISBN 9781589882195
Publication Date: 2/23/27 (available for preorder)

A nonagenarian philosopher reflects on the role of Socrates in her life

Written towards the end of her ninety-fourth year, Eva Brann’s essay Late Life with Socrates is her musing on “late life” and on the philosopher. She put her thoughts down as they came, in the presence of the Socrates she had come to know over her more than sixty years reading the dialogues in which Plato presents him to his readers. She intended this twenty-five thousand word self-conversation as a preface to a full-length book. Soon after she sent this putative preface to her publisher, she informed them that there would not be a lengthy manuscript to follow. So Paul Dry Books decided to publish this short book, dense with Ms. Brann's thoughts, full of turnings and asides, and rich with aphoristic depth so her readers could listen to the music that ran through her late life.

Eva Brann was a member of the senior faculty at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland, where she taught for more than sixty years. She held degrees from Brooklyn College and Yale University and was a recipient of the National Humanities Medal. Late Life with Socrates is her fifteenth book from Paul Dry Books. Her other books include Is Equality an Absolute Good?, Feigning, Pursuits of Happiness, Iron Filings or Scribblings, How to Constitute a World, Doublethink / Doubletalk, Then & Now, Un-Willing, The Logos of Heraclitus, Feeling Our Feelings, Homage to Americans, Open Secrets / Inward Prospects, The Music of the Republic, and Homeric Moments.