Elderhood Redefining Aging, Transforming Medicine, Reimagining Life

Louise Aronson

eBook - 2019

Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in General NonfictionA New York Times BestsellerLonglisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in NonfictionWinner of the WSU AOS Bonner Book AwardWinner of the 2022 At Home With Growing Older Impact AwardAs revelatory as Atul Gawande's Being Mortal, physician and award-winning author Louise Aronson's Elderhood is an essential, empathetic look at a vital but often disparaged stage of life. For more than 5,000 years, "old" has been defined as beginning between the ages of 60 and 70. That means most people alive today will spend more years in elderhood than in childhood, and many will be elders for 40 years or more. Yet at the very moment that humans are living longer than ever bef...ore, we've made old age into a disease, a condition to be dreaded, denigrated, neglected, and denied. Reminiscent of Oliver Sacks, noted... more