There are thousands of books that promise you need not grow old. They usually come with such phrases in their titles as Forever Young, Growing Younger, Ending Aging, Turn Back the Clock, Secrets to Staying Young and the ever-popular Anti-Aging.
Mostly, they are filled with denial and a lot of wishful thinking. Oh, they or they encourage you to start moving around – always a good idea – but they are really selling immortality on earth which we know is not the truth.
If, on the other hand, you are curious about what it’s really like to grow old, how your late years differ from youth and midlife, and want to learn to accept the process of aging – even amidst a culture that does everything possible to marginalize the old and make us invisible – you can’t go wrong with the books listed below. Very soon, mine will be listed among them. YEAH!
I have read a hundreds of books on aging and although there are other good ones, these few are some of the best. They have been published over a period of more than 30 years and are the collected wisdom and knowledge of writers – thinkers and activists who aim a bright, shining light onto the realities of getting old.
Each title links to its page at Amazon.com because it’s a good bet the book book will actually be there. I have often found that at other online booksellers, the price is lower so check around. Amazon is just a convenience.
The Art of Aging, A Doctor’s Prescription for Well-Being
By Sherwin B. Nuland, a deeply intelligent and compassionate book about how we grow old.
”We have arrived at a time and place in our lives where we muist study ourselves as we have never done before, take care of ourselves, and be attuned to ourselves in ways that are new to us and sometimes burdensome.”
The Creative Age: Awakening Human Potential in the Second Half of Life
By Gene D. Cohen, M.D. Although I sometimes think he is overly optimistic about how people can age, this is a remarkably smart book that shatters many of the negative beliefs about getting old.
”…certain qualities of mind and action in adulthood that are developmental in nature unfold in their own good time and offer unique and exciting potential for us as we grow older. Wisdom comes to us this way, largely a developmental product of age, smarts, and emotion and practical life experience.”
The Fountain of Age
By the mother of modern feminism, Betty Friedan, published in 1993. Hard going to read, but rewarding for the effort.
“The pursuit of youth was blinding us to the possibilities of age. Could denial of our own aging block further growth, foreclose the emergence of a new life otherwise open to us?”
From Age-ing to Sage-ing
By Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi published in 1997, and you don’t have to be Jewish to like Reb Zalman.
“As an alternative to inevitable senescence, this book proposes a new model of late-life development called sage-ing, a process that enables older people to become spiritually radiant, physically vital, and socially responsible ‘elders of the tribe.'”
Journal of a Solitude
Secondarily, these two by her: At Seventy: A Journal and Encore: A Journal of the Eightieth Year
“When I am alone the flowers are really seen; I can pay attention to them. They are felt as presences. Without them I would die…they change before my eyes. They live and die in a few days; they keep me closely in touch with the process, with growth, and also with dying. I am floated on their moments.”
The Last Gift of Time: Life Beyond Sixty
By Carolyn G. Heilbrun whom you may also know by her mystery-writer pseudonym, Amanda Cross.
“I, who had thought only of the rite of passage at fifty, have now discovered, at seventy, that the past ten years, the years of my sixties, were in their turn notably rewarding…I was savoring a combination of serenity and activity that had hardly been publicly attributed, as least as far as I could discern, to women in their seventh decade. There seemed to be few accounts depicting the pleasures of this time of life.”
The Longevity Revolution
By geriatrician, Dr. Robert N. Butler, who died in 2010. He gave TGB an excellent interview about this book in April 2008.
“…the tragic case of September 11, 2001, in New York City. Animal activists evacuated dogs and cats within twenty-four hours after the World Trade Center was attacked, while disabled or older persons were abandoned in their apartments for up to seven days before ad hoc medical teams arrived to rescue them.”
The Long History of Old Age
Edited by Pat Thane, this is a fascinating overview of what is known about how (mostly) European old people lived from ancient Greece and Rome through the 20th century.
”Separation of families because of movement around the country or the world is not, as is often thought, a fact only of modern life. In the distant past people did not always live out their lives in one place; and when they left, in the days before mass communication and mass literacy, links with home and family might be lost forever.”
My Twice-Lived Life
By Donald M. Murray, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who, until his death in 2006, wrote a wide-ranging and personal column about old age for The Boston Globe.
”But please allow us, children, to talk about what makes you uncomfortable. It is one way we deal with the inevitable. We need to talk about our not wanting to end up in a nursing home, whether we want cremation or burial, when to pull the plug. Denial works only so far, then reality…strips away the illusion of immortality.”
Old Age
By Simone de Beauvoir and first published in French in 1970 which succeeds well in her goal to express the experience of elders’ everyday lives at her particular time in history.
”[Old age] changes the individual’s relationship with time and therefore his relationship with the world and with his own history…as at every other period of his life, his status is imposed upon him by the society to which he belong.”
Old Age, Journey Into Simplicity
By Helen M. Luke, this is an invaluable reflection on old age through Luke’s interpretation of the writings of Homer, Shakespeare, T.S. Eliot and others.
”As a man grows old, his body weakens, his powers fail, his sight perhaps is dimmed, his hearing fades, or his power to move around is taken from him. In one way or another he is ‘imprisoned,’ and the moment of choice will come to him. Will he fight this confining process or will he go to meet in in the spirit of King Lear…”
Somewhere Toward the End, A Memoir
By Diana Athill who won a potful of awards for this honest, forthright and funny take on aging and life.
”She expected old age to make her miserable, and it did, although once she was immersed in it she expressed her misery by complaining about other and lesser things, the big one itself being too much to contemplate – although she did once say that what kept panic at bay was her suicide kit.”
Still Here: Embracing Aging, Changing, and Dying
By Ram Dass, the spiritual teacher who has and continues to helps show people of all faiths and no faith ways to growth and peace within themselves.
”As we age, we believe what we’re trained to believe about how old people think and live…And yet we have the power to age as we choose, and to use our changing circumstances to benefit the world and how it determines the quality of life.”
The Summer of a Dormouse
By British playwright, novelist and barrister, John Mortimer, who is also the author of the Rumpole of the Bailey series of stories.
“The time will come in your life, it will most certainly come, when the voice of God will thunder at you from a cloud, ‘From this day forth thou shalt not be able to put on thine own socks.'”
Travels with Epicurus, A Journey to a Greek Island in Search of a Fulfilled Life
By Daniel Klein. This inquiry into how to live a satisfying old age is brand new in 2012 but I believe it will stand the test of time.
“’Forever Young’ was my generation’s theme song, and unreflectively I had been singing along with them…But something about this new philosophy of old age does not sit right with me…I suspect that if I were to take this popular route, I would deny myself a unique and invaluable stage of life.”
What Are Old People For?
By geriatrician William H. Thomas who served, for a period of time, as the official geriatrician of this blog and for whom I continue to be grateful for his untiring advocacy on behalf of elders.
“…practically speaking, there is no elderhood into which we can be admitted. This absence cannot be described as a careless oversight. We live in a society that denies the legitimacy of old age and has little tolerance for those who dare to suppose that crones and sages could inspire us as models of healthy human development.”
Why Survive? Being Old in America
Another by Dr. Robert N. Butler who coined the term “ageism.” This book, published in 1975, won the Pulitzer Prize.
“Next is the sense of life experience. This is marked by a broadening perspective and by personal growth. One comes, in part at least, to know what life is all about.”