America grows older yet stays focused on its young. Whatever hill we try to climb, we're "over" it by fifty and should that hill involve entertainment or athletics we're finished long before. But if younger is better, it doesn't appear that youngest is best: we want our teachers, doctors, generals, and presidents to have reached a certain age. In context after context and contest after contest, we're more than a little conflicted about elders of the tribe; when is it right to honor them, and when to say "step aside"? In LASTINGNESS, Nicholas Delbanco, one of America's most celebrated men of letters, profiles great geniuses in the fields of visual art, literature, and music-Monet, Verdi, O'Keeffe, Yeats, among others - searching for the answers to why some artists' work diminishes with age, while others' reaches its peak. Both an intellectual inquiry into the essence of aging and creativity and a personal journey of discovery, this is a brilliant exploration of what determines what one needs to do to keep the habits of creation and achievement alive.

Poetry. The latest collection from prolific poet, literary chronicler, and man on the scene, Neeli Cherkovski, pays homage to his aging and gone friends from the heyday of all their lives, contemplates upon his own dwindling days, celebrates each moment passing by, and attempts to come to grips with ultimate ends. Neeli Cherkovski was born a poet and through hard, lifelong work, turned himself into a constant maker. These poems result from a close alignment between fingers, pencil, paper, and brain.

This provocative look at the universal challenges of aging provides a unique view of what it is like to be "beyond old." Annemarie's honesty, as she steps to the edge of existence and embraces the mystery of what it means to be human, gives us all the courage to look at our own lives in a more hopeful, compassionate way.

Raconteur, poet, and NPR commentator Andrei Codrescu delivers in his inimitable, irreverent style a collection that traverses subjects from aging to consumerism and religion to mass media. Brilliantly funny yet deeply insightful, these poems illuminate Codrescu's acerbic tone and outsized personality and capture the best of his oeuvre. Andrei Codrescu was born in Sibiu, Romania in 1946, and immigrated to the United States in 1966. The author of more than thirty-five books, Codrescu has edited the literary magazine Exquisite Corpse , and his provocative commentary is featured regularly on National Public Radio's All Things Considered . Codrescu currently resides in Arkansas.

At the age of nineteen, saxophone prodigy Latif James-Pearson boards a bus to Manhattan to find his aging idol, the great Albert Van Horn. The centers of Latif’s universe soon become a Harlem boarding house, where he spends his days practicing intensely, and the downtown club where Van Horn's group performs and Latif hides in the shadows, listening. There, he begins a complex affair with an older white painter named Mona, and starts working for Say Brother, a charismatic drug dealer. But as Latif’s frustrations with his playing mount, and the demands of balancing artistry, hustling, and love push him toward crisis, he is forced to confront his music, his past, and himself. A virtuosic story told with lyrical intensity, Shackling Water heralds the arrival of an important new voice in American literature.

Laron syndrome (LS), or primary growth hormone (GH) insensitivity, was first described in 1966. Since then, many patients worldwide have been diagnosed with LS, which involves defects in the GH receptor that cause combined congenital deficiency of GH and IGF-I activities. In this comprehensive book the authors draw upon 50 years of multidisciplinary clinical and investigative follow-up of the large Israeli cohort of LS patients. The genetic basis of the syndrome is fully considered, and all aspects of the pathophysiology of IGF-I deficiency are described. Data derived from the recently generated mouse model of LS are reviewed and compared with the human LS experience. Valuable advice is provided on treatment, and treatment effects, such as metabolic effects, adipose tissue alterations, and impact on aging, are fully explored. Together, this book condenses, consolidates, compares, and contrasts data derived from the human and mouse LS experiences and provides a unique resource for clinical and basic scientists to evaluate and compare IGF-I and GH actions.

Many cultures have myths about self-imitation, stories about people who pretend to be someone else pretending to be them, in effect masquerading as themselves. This great theme, in literature and in life, tells us that people put on masks to discover who they really are under the masks they usually wear, so that the mask reveals rather than conceals the self beneath the self.In this book, noted scholar of Hinduism and mythology Wendy Doniger offers a cross-cultural exploration of the theme of self-impersonation, whose widespread occurrence argues for both its literary power and its human value. The stories she considers range from ancient Indian literature through medieval European courtly literature and Shakespeare to Hollywood and Bollywood. They illuminate a basic human way of negotiating reality, illusion, identity, and authenticity, not to mention memory, amnesia, and the process of aging. Many of them involve marriage and adultery, for tales of sexual betrayal cut to the heart of the crisis of identity.These stories are extreme examples of what we common folk do, unconsciously, every day. Few of us actually put on masks that replicate our faces, but it is not uncommon for us to become travesties of ourselves, particularly as we age and change. We often slip carelessly across the permeable boundary between the un-self-conscious self-indulgence of our most idiosyncratic mannerisms and the conscious attempt to give the people who know us, personally or publicly, the version of ourselves that they expect. Myths of self-imitation open up for us the possibility of multiple selves and the infinite regress of self-discovery.Drawing on a dizzying array of tales-some fact, some fiction-The Woman Who Pretended to Be Who She Was is a fascinating and learned trip through centuries of culture, guided by a scholar of incomparable wit and erudition.

When God tells Levidow to buy a big blue car and get out of town, he dares to think that his suffering might be over. Instead he begins a journey that will put him out on the open highway with a reincarnation of himself as a much younger man, a hideous woman, and an oversupply of Dr. Brown's soda. His is just one of the journeys undertaken by the characters of From Hunger. With wit and irony, Gerald Shapiro leads us from a London park to the streets of Chicago, from the Vietnam War Memorial to a New York art gallery, as his characters search for sustenance in a world full of hunger. In a stroke of brilliance, solitary Altshuler, the failing, forty-ish shoe designer of the title story, invents an open-toed, stiletto-heeled hiking boot that makes him rich. But money doesn't satisfy his unnamed longing. When his 380-pound Uncle Phil comes to visit, Altshuler learns that there are cravings even greater than his own. "I been hungry my whole life", Uncle Phil says, as he eats his way through barbecued ribs and bags of corn chips, toward an inevitable finale with a meatball sandwich. During his annual research trip to London in "Golders Green", Ted Lustig, an inept scholar, searches for purpose in the life of an obscure German writer whose greatest achievement was his own suicide. Lustig is obsessed with the writer whose brilliant failure mimics his own. But when he meets the aging Anna Peltzman, he begins to realize that meaning isn't always revealed in dramatic moments, but rather in far more puzzling ways. Lenny Schrank is inexplicably drawn to the city of his father's youth in "The Community Seder", where he happens upon a mysterious synagogue filled with faces from his past. "Let anyonewho is hungry, come in and eat", chants the congregation. What Lenny finds at the Passover celebration is an exquisite recognition of all that is missing from his life - and a brief moment of community. With wonderfully idiosyncratic characters and deft use of detail, Gerald Shapiro takes us beyond the grimness of the lives of his characters to reveal the hunger - and the hope - in us all.

In a huge Hawaiian mansion by the sea live Jack Wolfe, ruthless millionaire, and his knockout wife, ex-hooker Nora. Weary of their marriage, Nora seduces dim-bulb aging surfer Chad to kill her husband. But then it seems as if Jack wants Chad to kill him--or rather, he wants it to look like he was killed so he can avoid legal prosecution and begin a new life. So he offers Chad a better deal. Then it gets complicated: who are allies and who are conspirators is not known. It's all observed by Hawaiian Jewish detective Dani Kahana--also in love with Nora. This complicated tale ends explosively with a hilarious and unexpected close. Martin's Press.

Grandma Moses was old. Methuselah was old. Bob Hope was old. But boomers getting gray hairs and wrinkles? It can't be! Aging has been a normal human condition since the dawn of humankind, but for the boundless boomer bulge hitting its thirties, forties, and fifties, giving aging angst a whole new meaning. In this hilarious book, well-known humor writers Lisa Birnbach, Ann Hodgman, Patricia Marx, and David Owen have brought together countless reasons for their maturing compatriots to look on the bright side of getting older. 1,003 Great Things About Getting Older will convince you that aging isn't so bad. Finally you can eat dinner at 4:00. Your Pineapple Pez Dispenser is worth $900. Chances grow smaller every year that you will die in childbirth. You'll learn about nonagenarians like the Delaney sisters, Henny Youngman, and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., and the secrets of the very old (yogurt, scotch, and pain killers). All in all, the book is a compendium of humor, trivia and real information. 1,003 Great Things About Getting Older is a perfect feel-good gift to raise the spirits of anyone concerned about a few wrinkles or gray hairs.

What is it that most people want to become but nobody wants to be?

George Melly is nudging 80. He is still swinging and singing, fly-fishing, flirting, and for now just playing at senility. But he walks very slowly these days. He's losing control over his bladder, and his bowels. He no longer, being quite deaf, enjoys noisy parties. He's been seriously ill once, and not quite well often. And he's constantly being probed and tinkered with, at St Mary's Hospital: like an old car in and out of the garage. Sex has walked out on him, but Irish Whiskey, in only slightly diminished quantities, remains a good friend. This remarkably cheerful book is his diary of it all. A darkly funny, frank, and larger-than-life account about how he feels to be growing old and irresistibly slowing down.

In the early 1970s, Milton Rogovin set out to document the neighborhood near his house. He made a series of portraits of working-class people in Buffalo's Lower West Side. Then he returned to photograph the same people in the early 1980s and again in the 1990s. The result is this remarkable and moving portrait of time and place in America. Here are fifty of an acclaimed photographer's engaging Triptychs - a visual chronicle of change, aging, endurance, and finally survival. As Robert Coles writes in his foreword, "These photographs constitute a major contribution to the American documentary tradition. They represent the insistence of one careful, gifted, attentive photographer upon seeing through, as it were, his self-assigned job of seeing." Here we see working people who, like most Americans, find partners, have children and grandchildren, sometimes separate, and sometimes die early. Some age considerably in the ten years between photographs, others almost not at all. Some lose children, change partners and houses, and some visibly change lifestyles. What remains constant is the passing of time and its effects upon his subjects, so evident in Rogovin's work. These are among the themes observed and discussed in Stephen Jay Gould's illuminating introduction.

Product Description Constance "Connie" Gueyer and Peter Tarker each conduct research in laboratories at Bailey Medical College in New York City. Connie is a 48 year-old virologist (the study of viruses) and working with the Congo River virus. Peter is a 37 year-old geneticist (the study of genes). Virology and genetics are closely connected, so getting each other's opinions at work was the excuse they used to get together. They soon had a relationship going. Connie feels a bit self conscious due to the age difference between them. So she decides to take things slowly. Connie's studies show her the region of the brain that seems to control aging. Since Peter has identified the factor that causes aging, they begin an intense collaboration. The results set the scientific community on its ear! Then Connie sees Peter with his young assistant and believes (wrongly) the worst. In a moment of depression, and while under the influence of some medication, Connie takes a dose of the viral preparation they have been using in tests with lab mice. Shortly afterward though, the mice in those tests began to have serious problems. Review Four Stars: What a wonderful debut novel for Dr. Judith Sulzberger! The characters are well developed and the plot believable. -- Detra Fitch, Huntress Reviews, February 5, 2004 About the Author Judith Sulzberger practiced medicine before turning her attention to writing. For several years, she wrote a health column for the East Hampton Star, currently serves on the Health Science Advisory Board of Columbia University School of Medicine, and is an advisor to the Genome Center at that same university. She spends most of her time in East Hampton with her husband.

Born with a split lip and cleft palate, Toshy Wolfman's life is an uphill battle. Believing he is dim-witted and ugly, Toshy finds his resentment slowly building as he is ridiculed, used, and misled. Ultimately, he is imprisoned after being caught stealing a valuable and famous diamond, the Orange Sunset. But Toshy's story is not his alone - it is shared with his two sisters: Lil, a radical and a devotee of anarchist Emma Goldman; and Bessie, who goes to work for one of Goldmans enemies, the owners of the Orange Sunset. Toshy's love for his sisters drives him to make some of the bravest decisions of his life. But despite having seemingly overcome his obstacles, an aging Toshy stuns his nephew by asking for his assistance in committing suicide.Toshy wont fully explain his decision. Nor will he fully explain why, at this late stage in life, he is obsessed with making a journey to France.

A masterful novel of political progressives making their way--and not--in an ever-changing postwar AmericaFor Marty Dworkin and his band of young Trotskyist dreamers in Buffalo, New York, the vision of a just, socialist world crumbles with the rise of Stalin and the chaos of World War II. In the two decades that follow, Dworkin and his idealistic colleagues strive to establish a new political party and battle through unexpected trials with family, work, aging, and the changing world. They run up against an increasingly conservative America and a thriving materialism directly opposed to their own fervent beliefs. They emerge humbled, but still hopeful, into the 1960s, when civil rights struggles and anti-war radicalism move to center stage. Standing Fast is a classic, panoramic portrait of life amid the shattered dreams and visionary ambitions of the American left.

Knowing yet always surprising, Edith Konecky's latest novel takes on issues of love, aging, and the art of writing.

Singing to a Bulldog presents the practical and motivational lessons Anson Williams, an accomplished actor, director, singer and producer gleaned from his life experience and words of wisdom from the head janitor at one of his first jobs. Growing up in 1950s California, young Anson William Heimlich showed very little promise. Clumsy, unsure of himself, and made to feel like a failure by his disappointed artist of a dad, Anson started working odd jobs as a teenager to help support his family. His boss at one of these jobs, an aging African-American janitor named Willie, unexpectedly became a mentor—and the lessons he taught young Anson proved to be invaluable throughout his subsequent career as an actor, director, and entrepreneur. In Singing to a Bulldog, Anson Williams (as he came to be known) relates both these lessons and the never-before-revealed stories of the many seminal TV series he has worked on and the famous (and not-so-famous) folks he’s encountered during his 40 years in Hollywood, including: • being directed by Steven Spielberg in his first dramatic role • getting kidnapped by Gerald Ford’s daughter at the White House • subbing for Sammy Davis, Jr., as a headliner with Bill Cosby • being humbled by Sunny, a young volunteer for the Cerebral Palsy National Organization • mentoring Shailene Woodley on the set of The Secret Life of the American Teenager and many more. This compelling read has a cross-generational and broad appeal, combining all the fun of a celebrity memoir with the emotional impact of an inspirational bestseller. With Singing to a Bulldog, Anson Williams brings his gift of storytelling to a new medium in a book that is sure to touch readers’ hearts and lives as profoundly as Willie once touched his.

Coming up to her sixtieth birthday, Kate Figes found herself turning to the larger questions of family, love and life's meaning. It is like this author to examine different stages in writing, and her books - from new motherhood and adolescence to coupledom and infidelity - testify to this way of understanding herself and others: so naturally she turned to writing to explore the challenges of becoming sixty. And then - a horrible, and sudden diagnosis of breast cancer which had metastasised. Instead of a gentle journey into middle age, Kate Figes began to write for her life. Now, clawing back confidence and control was not just the ordinary business of these years: it was the only way to try and survive great pain and emotional turmoil. As her writing became an honest reflection on ageing, failing, regrets and the importance of childhood memory, friends, family and love she found a new determination to live to the full and about finding ways to face up to a shortened life expectancy with dignity. Original, passionate, funny and moving, On Smaller Dogs and Larger Life Questions will resonate with anyone dealing with the many griefs and freedoms of midlife. It is about living with a life-threatening disease but it is even more: an intelligent and passionate look at the way we can approach disappointment and trouble, friendship and love - every day.

Underlying the vision behind democracy is the recognition that every individual has dignity, adequacy and worth. This democratic understanding of the worth and standing of the individual lies at the core of what the West calls enlightenment. The Western idea of enlightenment, rooted in the great vision of the Biblical prophets, is generally understood to have entered mainstream consciousness through the political democratic movements of the mid 18th century. Western enlightenment is primarily concerned with the democratization of political power. Classical enlightenment, sometimes called Eastern enlightenment because it was greatly emphasized in the East, is about the individual merging into the greater one. The appearance of separate self is an illusion, which must be overcome as the individual realizes that are really not separate at all but part of the one.The goal of Eastern enlightenment is moving beyond the grasping ego and desperately seeking separate self by attaining a state of consciousness in which the illusion of separateness was dissolved in the greater one. This path of classical enlightenment is seen as the path beyond suffering. Unique Self enlightenment brings the Eastern and Western understandings about enlightenment together, into a higher Integral World Spirituality embrace.Unique Self enlightenment is based on your commitment to transcend separate self into the one, even as you realize that essence sees through your unique perspective.Unique Self opens the door to the potential democratization of enlightenment. To awaken to your Unique Self is to be lived as God, which, in truth, means to be lived as love.