The Best Books on Aging

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 snake-oil nostrums involving $400/ounce lotions, denial and a lot of wishful thinking. Oh, they pay lip service to getting off your butt and moving around – always a good idea – but they are really selling immortality on earth and if you believe in that, well, go ahead and waste your money.

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 the pleasures inherent in the acceptance 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.

I have read a hundreds of books on aging and although there are other good ones, these few are the cream. They have been published over a period of more than 30 years and are the collected wisdom and knowledge of their superb writers - thinkers and activists who aim a bright, shining light onto the realities of getting old.

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 By May Sarton. 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 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. 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 ande cats wthin 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 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.'"

What Are Old People For? By geriatrician Dr. William H. Thomas with whom I share a video discussion on this blog every couple of weeks titled, The TGB Geriatrician.

"...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."