Getting Over Getting Older: An Intimate Journey - Hardcover

Pogrebin, Letty Cottin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0316712639 ISBN 13: 9780316712637

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company, 1996

Synopsis

As 77 million baby boomers begin turning fifty, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, a respected social critic and award-winning writer, tells the truth about that uncharted period when time speeds up and the body slows down - when you are no longer young but far from old, and you refuse to believe that you are over the hill. Pogrebin's journey out of her forties and into her fifties becomes a user-friendly map of this challenging terrain as she demystifies the fears most people can't face and celebrates the possibilities most people can't see. Every woman who is facing fifty or has already moved past it will be grateful for this warm, witty exploration of the indignities and epiphanies of midlife, large and small. Suddenly waking up in the middle of the night, for instance, with a non-negotiable need to go to the bathroom. Immediately. Having to let the waistband out on every skirt you own. Discovering one day that you can no longer read the phone book. Finally figuring out what you want to be when you grow up. Realizing that not everyone you love will be here forever and neither will you. Cherishing the present as never before.

About this title

Review:

Not everyone--not even every feminist--holds to the belief that age brings wisdom, power, and its own beauty. Faced with turning 50, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, founder of Ms. and author of several books including Growing Up Free, says her reactions ranged "from astonishment to anger, from confusion to curiosity, from denial to disgust." Using herself as a compass and adding many other well- known voices, Pogrebin's irreverent book takes on friendship, sex, love, dieting, mothering adults, the physical and emotional depredations of aging, and mortality. Rather than stubbornly toeing the line on spurning plastic surgery, for example, she thoughtfully explores "the tension between artificiality and authenticity." In the end, she concludes, one can devote one's remaining years to lamenting and running after lost youth or put that time to far better uses. Despite a glib, overly playful tone that trivializes certain issues, Pogrebin's desire to share downplayed truths is a boon.

About the Author:

Letty Cottin Pogrebin is a founding editor of Ms. magazine.

About this edition

• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0316712639
• ISBN 13: 9780316712637
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336