Late Life with Socrates

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.