America is greying. One in three people will be fifty or older by the end of this decade. Although Baby Boomers have made great strides in changing some of the negative stereotypes associated with ageing, ageism is still prevalent throughout society. These deeply ingrained, harmful prejudices can be changed to benefit everybody, argue Drs. Albert Ellis and Emmett Velten. They believe that everyone can - with the right attitudes, tools and hard work - invent their own lives, not just live out the scripts provided by an ageist society. Written in a humorous and interactive style, "Optimal Aging" should help readers recognize and combat harmful attitudes that hold them back and develop more productive attitudes. The authors address everything from finances to health, personal relationships to retirement planning, dating to coping with loss. Ellis and Velten's methods and tools come from researched, practical forms of self-help and psychotherapy, particularly rational emotive behaviour therapy (REBT). "Optimal Aging" seeks to help people: break free of negative stereotypes and prejudices about age; feel happy and committed to life and living vitally; get more of what they want and less of what they don't want out of their longer lives; apply their knowledge and common sense to cope with the practical hassles of older age and to capitalize on its opportunities; cultivate attitudes that will help them plan and act in their own interest; resolve disappointments about past failures and unfulfilled expectations; and create new roles and experiences.

How to avoid a fiscal crisis in the next generation -- and how to protect yourself if the government acts too late: policy recommendations and individual strategies to protect against skyrocketing tax rates, drastically reduced health and retirement benefits, high inflation, and a ruined currency. In 2030, as 77 million baby boomers hobble into old age, walkers will outnumber strollers; there will be twice as many retirees as there are today but only 18 percent more workers. How will America handle this demographic overload? How will Social Security and Medicare function with fewer working taxpayers to support these programs? According to Laurence Kotlikoff and Scott Burns, if our government continues on the course it has set, we'll see skyrocketing tax rates, drastically lower retirement and health benefits, high inflation, a rapidly depreciating dollar, unemployment, and political instability. The government has lost its compass, say Kotlikoff and Burns, and the current administration is heading straight into the coming generational storm. But don't panic. To solve a problem you must first understand it. Kotlikoff and Burns take us on a guided tour of our generational imbalance, first introducing us to the baby boomers--their long retirement years and "the protracted delay in their departure to the next world." Then there's the "fiscal child abuse" that will double the taxes paid by the next generation. There's also the "deficit delusion" of the under-reported national debt. And none of this, they say, will be solved by any of the popularly touted remedies: cutting taxes, technological progress, immigration, foreign investment, or the elimination of wasteful government spending. So how can the United States avoid this demographic/fiscal collision? Kotlikoff and Burns propose bold new policies, including meaningful reforms of Social Security, and Medicare. Their proposals are simple, straightforward, and geared to attract support from both political parties. But just in case politicians won't take the political risk to chart a new direction, Kotlikoff and Burns also offer a "life jacket"--guidelines for individuals to protect their financial health and retirement. This paperback edition of The Coming Generational Storm has been revised and updated and includes a new foreword by the authors.

Are the elderly posing a threat to America's political system with their enormous clout? Are they stretching resources to the breaking point with their growing demands for care? Distinguished economist and legal scholar Richard A. Posner explodes the myth that the United States could be on the brink of gerontological disaster. Aging and Old Age offers fresh insight into a wide range of social and political issues relating to the elderly, such as health care, crime, social security, and discrimination. From the dread of death to the inordinate law-abidingness of the old, from their loquacity to their penny-pinching, Posner paints a surprisingly rich, revealing, and unsentimental portrait of the millions of elderly people in the United States. He explores issues such as age discrimination in employment, creativity and leadership as functions of age, and the changing social status of the elderly. Why are old people, presumably with less to lose, more unwilling to take risks than young people? Why don't the elderly in the United States command the respect and affection they once did and still do in other countries? How does aging affect driving and criminal records? And how does aging relate to creativity across different careers?

The author of the ground-breaking work, The Feminine Mystique, tackles the meaning of age and aging in contemporary society, for both men and women. 250,000 first printing. BOMC Feat Alt. QPB Split Main. First serial, Time. Tour.

When noted anthropologist Barbara Myerhoff received a grant to explore the process of aging, she decided to study some elderly Jews from Venice, California, rather than to report on a more exotic people. The story of the rituals and lives of these remarkable old people is, as Bel Kaufman said, "one of those rare books that leave the reader somehow changed." Here Dr. Myerhoff records the stories of a culture that seems to give people the strength to face enormous daily problems -- poverty, neglect, loneliness, poor health, inadequate housing and physical danger. The tale is a poignant one, funny and often wise, with implications for all of us about the importance of ritual, the agonies of aging, and the indomitable human spirit.

The Golden Years? You've got to be kidding . . . Part serious, part comic, these words reflect our ambivalence about aging in the twenty-first century. Is it a blessing or a curse? With refreshing candor and characteristic wit, best-selling author Lillian Rubin looks deeply into the issues of our graying nation, the triumph of our new longevity, and the pain, both emotional and physical, that lies right alongside it. Through thought-provoking interviews, research, and unflinching analysis of her own life experience, Dr. Rubin offers us a much-needed road map for the uncharted territory that lies ahead. In a country where 78 million baby boomers are moving into their sixties and economists worry that they are "the monster at the door" that will break the Social Security bank and trash the economy; where 40 percent of sixty-five-year-olds are in the "sandwich generation," taking care of their parents while often still supporting their children; and where Americans eighty-five and older represent the fastest-growing segment of the population, we cannot afford to pretend that our expanded old age is just a walk on the sunny side of the street, that "sixty is the new forty," "eighty is the new sixty," or that we'll all live happily ever after. In this wide-ranging book, Dr. Rubin examines how the new longevity ricochets around our social and emotional lives, affecting us all, for good and ill, from adolescence into senescence. How, she asks, do sixty-somethings fill another twenty, thirty, or more years post retirement without a "useful" identity or obvious purpose? What happens to sex as we move through the decades after sixty? What happens to long-cherished friendships as life takes unexpected turns? What happens when, at seventy, instead of living the life of freedom we've dreamed about, we find ourselves having to take care of Mom and Dad? What happens to the inheritances boomers have come to expect when their parents routinely live into their eighties and beyond and the cost of their care soars? In tackling the subject of aging over a broad swath of the population, cutting across race, class, gender, and physical and cognitive ability, Lillian Rubin gives us a powerful and long-overdue reminder that all of us will be touched by the problems arising from our new longevity. Our best hope is to understand thoroughly the realities we face and to prepare-as individuals and as a society-for a long life from sixty on up.

On Aging, the first of Jean Amery's books after At the Mind's Limits, is a powerful and profound work on the process of aging and the limited but real defenses available to those experiencing the process. Each essay covers a set of issues about growing old. ""Existence and the Passage of Time"" focuses on the way aging makes the old progressively see time as the essence of their existence. ""Stranger to Oneself"" is a meditation on the ways the aging are alienated from themselves. ""The Look of Others"" treats social aging - the realization that it is no longer possible to live according to one's potential or possibilities. ""Not to Understand the World Anymore"" deals with the loss of the ability to understand new developments in the arts and in the changing values of society. The fifth essay, ""To Live with Dying,"" argues that everyone compromises with death in old age (the time in life when we feel the death that is in us). Here Amery's intention, as encapsulated by John D. Barlow, becomes most clear: ""to disturb easy and cheap compromises and to urge his readers to their own individual acts of defiance and acceptance.""

Examines the experience of aging from the standpoint of the individual, rather than merely as a collection of statistics and charts. This title looks at aging, emotion and coping, and stability and change in both environment and personality. It is useful for scholars and also accessible to the lay audience.

The social realities of old age have undergone profound changes since the middle ages. This study shows, however, that the images, attitudes and expectations of old people have changed for less. Shulamith Shahar shows how the status and social participation of the elderly varied according to gender, social stratum, economic resources, position, level of functioning, and personality, as well as according to regional custom. The book offers a broad cultural history of old age in medieval western Europe. Shahar examines the images, attitudes and advocated norms used in relation to the elderly and looks at the elderly in various social strata: churchmen and nuns, rulers, small office holders and soldiers, town dwellers and peasants. A valuable insight into life and society in the Middle Ages, this will prove an invaluable addition to history reading lists.

Argues that senility is basically a form of malnutrition, and offers nutritional guidelines to help prevent the dehabilitating affects of old age

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.

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

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.