Description
A Good Age provides the guideposts for dignity and vitality of people past the physical prime of life. It is a ringing affirmation of the pleasure, accomplishment and fulfilment within the grasp of those who prefer to remain youthful despite advancing years. It offers the promise of a better, longer, more active life-free of imaginary fears which are all too common, defiantly rejecting obsolete assumptions that “old” people are helpless, incompetent and useless. It is an unequivocal repudiation of the notion that the onset of middle age marks the beginning of life’s downhill phase.
Dr. Alex Comfort, one of the world’s leading gerontologists, has been methodically studying and researching the ageing process for the past twenty-five years. He sees our so-called senior citizens as an oppressed minority who are wrongfully “supposed to be physically and intellectually infirm, slow on the uptake and rigid in their ways”. In A Good Age, he shows clearly the wide range of rewarding options open to all who wish to remain alert and active past middle age. Dr. Comfort says, “The urgent need is for ‘old’ people to learn to fight back against hogwash, classification, put-downs and rip-offs which, by virtue of the passage of time alone, society writes into the roles of people who could still be young.”
Michael Leonard’s beautiful portraits of older people who do retain a vigour, vitality and sense of fun emphasize Dr. Comfort’s point that we can all enjoy such achievements if we set our minds to a revolutionary change of attitudes, our own as well as those of society.
A Good Age examines leisure options, retirement problems, health, sexual activity, bereavement and other questions of profound significance for those who wish to stay youthful with age. Dr. Comfort describes with clarity, honesty and precision what really happens when we grow old and how we can liberate ourselves from the trivialities, misconceptions and penalties with which older people are afflicted.
This is an important book, destined to become a classic. It is one of the most exhilarating examinations of the human condition to be published in recent years. It is a book for anyone apprehensive of growing old or distressed at being old.
Hardcover, 218 pages. In very good pre-loved condition with the exception of some fading to the dustcover and an inscription inside the front cover.
