First published 2019
Louise Aronson draws from twenty-five years treating elderly patients to challenge how society views aging. The Harvard-trained geriatrician argues that we have transformed old age into a disease to be feared and avoided, even as people now spend more years as elders than as children. For over 5,000 years, cultures have marked the beginning of old age somewhere between 60 and 70, meaning many people today will live as elders for four decades or more. Aronson weaves together patient stories with insights from history, science, literature, and popular culture to create a new understanding of this life stage. She presents aging as neither catastrophe nor idealized fantasy, but as a complex experience filled with joy, wonder, frustration, and hope. The book offers readers a compassionate examination of aging, medicine, and what it means to be human.
Genres: non-fiction, biography-memoir, health, medicine, academic
Vibes: compassionate, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: academic, medical
Setting: Harvard
Period: 21st-century
464 pages · Hardcover · Bloomsbury Publishing