A New York Times bestseller Longlisted for the CarnegieAs 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 … 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 before, we’ve made old age into a disease, a condition to be dreaded, denigrated, neglected, and denied.
Reminiscent of Oliver Sacks, noted Harvard-trained geriatrician Louise Aronson uses stories from her quarter century of caring for patients, and draws from history, science, literature, popular culture, and her own life to weave a vision of old age that’s neither nightmare nor utopian fantasy–a vision full of joy, wonder, frustration, outrage, and hope about aging, medicine, and humanity itself.
Elderhood is for anyone who is, in the author’s own words, “an aging, i.e., still-breathing human being.”
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Dr. Aronson calls her book both a battle cry and a lament. I’m on board for both. You can read my review of Elderhood in the link below, which you may have to copy and put into your internet browser.
https://medium.com/p/elderhood-a-new-paradigm-for-the-third-stage-of-life-1df1414fda02?source=email-3a314a85cd3f–writer.postDistributed&sk=f200129a093268ad342617c91a9a578f
In the latter years there are possibilities for joy, transcendence, and meaning, but also for just the opposite. Aronson writes like a memoirist while giving us scientific insight, philosophical wisdom, and wise counsel for a journey and destination we all share. Elderhood is a lovely and thoughtful exploration of this voyage.
I read (no, devoured) this book by Louise Aronson, a doctor and geriatrician, long before the pandemic and the nursing home disasters. She not only lays out how inept and often cruel our healthcare system is when it comes to our elders but also two very important things that balance the bad news: she honors her clients and their wisdom and pure grit to survive in an inadequate system and offers real-life, real-time, wouldn’t-be-that-hard solutions. Starting with paying caregivers decent wages, respect, and more tools to do their difficult jobs. Of course – congress would have to get off their butts and really stop taking bribes (oops – campaign contributions), take on the medical-industrial complex, big pharma, and the AMA. Aronson is the real deal and hopefully not done yet getting the word out, being listened to, and a change agent for the better.
There are so many issues facing us regarding our elderly and ourselves as we become elderly. Questions about the value of older lives, and what shall we do with our lives, even as science has wrought such life giving miracles to prolong them. ELDERHOOD is one woman’s own journey through the medical profession in treating, teaching, living with this issue and writing her own way through the decision making process for herself and so many others. She knows there is no easy answer and she is posing questions. Thankfully someone with this knowledge is doing so.
comprehensive overview very informative
Louise Aronson delves into both negative and positive aspects of aging We will spend more time as an elder than a childHow we live those years are determined in a large part by our attitude The author quotes Cicero Old age will only be respected if it It fights for itself, maintains its rights and asserts control over its own to its last breath.We are the authors of our narrative Do we engage in activities that give us a sense of enjoyment and purpose ?Do we transcend our limitations or define ourselves by them?The authors last sentence contends Elderhood is life’s 3rd and final act What it looks like is up to us !
Very informative about the health care of adults as they age.
Calm, realistic, practical approach to aging.
As a retired nurse who has worked in critical care, home health and hospice, I can relate well to the short shrift elderly patients experience in each of those settings. This book is a wake up call to anyone who hhas an elderly loved one or intends to become elderly—in other words, everyone. It is a precautionary exploration and a tool to help navigate the maze of health care in our profit-driven , youth-oriented society. Well written by an experienced gerontologist, it is easy to read and filled with true stories giving evidence that a good life until a good death is a reasonable goal that many fail to achieve. “Elderhood” provides the tools to make it possible.
While the subject matter is not light or good feeling, the gentle manner it is presented makes it easier to accept the current medical realities. At 71, I can easily identify with the stories presented. However, not in such a negative way; but rather perhaps with a little more hopeful reflection. I believe it provides a realistic view (from a doctor’s perspective as a well as a human being approaching elderhood herself). I’ve never read anything quite like it.
I wanted to like this book and learn something from it. It was too long and wordy.
This is a truly wonderful book and its author is clearly an exceptional and truly caring physician but it suffers from some organizational incoherence and repetition that keeps me from rating it 5 stars rather than 4. It is, none the less, really worth reading.
Aronson’s Elderhood is dazzling, rich with knowledge gleaned from her professional work as a geriatrician, her personal experience as a daughter, her common sense, and her thorough analysis of our social supports and cultural messaging. Her arguments are powerful, and her conclusions are revolutionary. I hope everyone who has a stake in older people, which is ultimately all of us, will read this book.
In Elderhood, the physician-writer Louise Aronson provides an honest and humane analysis of what it means to grow old in America. Her book — part memoir, history, and social critique — is deeply sympathetic to elders and sharply critical of the “anti-aging industry” that has tried to turn being elderly into some sort of disease. I highly recommend this wonderful book to anyone who plans on growing old in this country.