Shut up and Live! : (You Know How) A 92 Year-Old's Guide to Getting There

"Shut Up and Live!" is a How-To book by someone who really knows how. At 92, Marion Downs became frustrated with books by 50 and 60 year-olds who write so knowingly about how to live to a ripe old age. She believed these "youngsters" had no experience with what it takes to live vigorously into the 90s­—how to deal with the varied vicissitudes that old age brings, and to emerge with vibrant quality of life. So she wrote "Shut Up and Live!" Here she tells it like it is, not with complaints and pleas for sympathy, but with triumph over all the odds, into a glorious life.

Marion Downs has been a maverick in the field of Pediatric Audiology for nearly sixty years. She is a Professor Emerita in the Department of Otolaryngology (E.N.T.), Division of Audiology (Ears!) at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center. She struggled for 40 years to convince professionals to adopt Newborn Hearing Screening in delivery hospitals. "First they ignored me," she says. "then they laughed at me, then they ridiculed me, and THEN I WON! (Okay, so Gandhi said it too)." As a result of her work, 90% of all live births in America are being screened for hearing loss.

She has retired many times, with the intention of specializing in tennis, skiing, hiking, swimming and "a passel of great-grandchildren"—twenty so far, more counting down. None of the retirements took, but she has won several gold medals for tennis in the Senior Olympics, completed a mini-triathlon at the age of 89, and sky-dived from a plane at the age of 90. She continues to travel the world, speaking to anyone who will listen about Pediatric Audiology.

After writing a spate of professional books, articles and chapters, she decided to share with other oldsters the activities she thinks allowed her to live to 92. Genetics had nothing to do with it—both parents died at 72—so she now has the temerity to pass it all on.