“Classics are books which, the more we think we know them through hearsay, the more original, unexpected, and innovative we find them when we actually read them.” - Italo Calvino

Charles William Elliot claimed that you could get all the elements of a liberal education by spending only 15 minutes a day reading from a collection of books that all fit within the confines of a five-foot shelf. To prove this, he also selected the appropriate books and so the Harvard Classics were born. Now, thanks to ebooks, you don’t even need the five-foot shelf to enjoy them.