“A fascinating look at how scientists are working to help doctors treat the aging process itself, helping us all to lead longer, healthier lives.” —Sanjay Gupta, MD Aging—not cancer, not heart disease—is the underlying cause of most human death and suffering. The same cascade of biological changes that renders us wrinkled and gray also opens the door to dementia and disease. We work furiously to conquer each individual disease, but we never think to ask: Is aging itself necessary? Nature tells us it is not: there are tortoises and salamanders who are spry into old age and whose risk of dying is the same no matter how old they are, a phenomenon known as “biological immortality.” In Ageless, Andrew Steelecharts the astounding progress science has made in recent years to secure the same for humans: to help us become old without getting frail, to live longer without ill health or disease.

"An inspirational look at the beauty found within the Circle of Life." —The Times "A straightforward, clear-cut how-to book for putting a spark (or two!) back into your life. It truly describes the magical beauty to be found in the twilight years." &mdashYule Biyung, author and inspirational speaker Thomas and Cindy Senior are the best-selling husband-and-wife team who authored Retiring Gracefully and Senior Sex: How to Rekindle the Sizzle in Your Bedroom. In The Joys of Getting Older the tradition of their previous books, they have collected all their best advice and share their insights into how you can lead a happy and energetic life after reaching "that certain age." The Seniors are living out their dream retirement in sunny Florida, where hurricanes and theme parks provide routine stimulation in their lives.

"My feminist sisters . . . counsel women to welcome age", writes award-winning author and founder of "Ms". magazine Letty Cottin Pogrebin. "They discern nobility and power in the elder female. So do I, but I'm not in a hurry to "be" one. I hated turning 50, it's as simple as that". With a winning combination of insight and emotional honesty, she shatters myths about everything from menopause to monogamy--and offers women a new, mindful perspective on the middle chapters of their lives.

"A tour for all of us "of a certain age" through the resources and skills to navigate the years between maturity and old age, told with warmth, humor, and more than 4,000 years of Jewish experience to the question of how to shape this new stage of life"--

The acclaimed author of What's Worth Knowing reveals the truth about aging: Old age often offers a richer, better, and more self-assured life than youth. From our earliest lives, we are told that our youth will be the best time of our lives-that the energy and vitality of youth are the most important qualities a person can possess, and that everything that comes after will be a sad decline. But in reality, says Wendy Lustbader, youth is not the golden era it is often made out to be. For many, it is a time riddled with anxiety, angst, confusion, and the torture of uncertainty. Conversely, the media often feeds us a vision of growing older as a journey of defeat and diminishment. They are dead wrong. As Lustbader counters, "Life gets better as we get older, on all levels except the physical." Life Gets Better is not a precious or whimsical tome on the quirky wisdom of the elderly. Lustbader-who has worked for several decades as a social worker specializing in aging issues-conducted firsthand research with aging and elderly people in all walks of life, and she found that they overwhelmingly spoke of the mental and emotional richness they have drawn from aging. Lustbader discovered that rather than experiencing a decline from youth, aging people were happier, more courageous, and more interested in being true to their inner selves than were young people. Life Gets Better examines through first-person stories, as well as Lustbader's own observations, how a lifetime of lessons learned can yield one of the most personally and emotionally fruitful periods of anyone's life. As an eighty-six-year-old who contributed her story to the book noted, "For me, being old is the reward for outlasting all the big and little problems that happen to all of us along life's pathway." The collected stories in Life Gets Better provide a hopeful corrective to the fear of aging aggressively instilled in us by the media. Don't dread the future: The best years of our lives just may be ahead.

Growing older is a process. Growing old is a conclusion. If you're growing older you see some hope because you have perspective and you keep learning. If you've grown old, you may cynically think that times have never been as bad as they are now, and that they can only get worse. This book is about learning how to "make peace with where you are right now." It's about learning from the past and then moving past it. It's about growing--personally, spiritually, and in our relationships with God and with others. If we think properly about growing older we'll never have to grow old.