Adult Nonfiction

When 83-year-old Sergio is sent as an undercover spy to a Chilean retirement home to track suspected elder abuse, he learns a deeper lesson on human connection. Through the lens of the hidden camera in his decoy glasses, viewers watch as Sergio struggles to balance his assignment with becoming increasingly involved in the lives

ADULT NONFICTION

Aronson, Louise. Elderhood: Redefining Aging, Transforming Medicine, Reimagining Life. London, UK: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019.
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 life itself. The story of aging is the story of what it means to be human. It’s both a timeless tale and one that’s rapidly changing with advances in science, technology, and society.

Pipher, Mary. Women Rowing North: Navigating Life’s Currents and Flourishing as We Age. London, UK: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019.
Women growing older contend with ageism, misogyny, and loss. Yet as Mary Pipher shows, most older women are deeply happy and filled with gratitude for the gifts of life. Their struggles help them grow into the authentic, empathetic, and wise people they have always wanted to be. In Women Rowing North, Pipher offers a timely examination of the cultural and developmental issues women face as they age. Drawing on her own experience as daughter, sister, mother, grandmother, caregiver, clinical psychologist, and cultural anthropologist, she explores ways women can cultivate resilient responses to the challenges they face.

Gawande, Atul. Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End. New York, NY: Metropolitan Books, 2014.
Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming birth, injury, and infectious disease from harrowing to manageable. But in the inevitable condition of aging and death, the goals of medicine seem too frequently to run counter to the interest of the human spirit. Nursing homes, preoccupied with safety, pin patients into railed beds and wheelchairs. Hospitals isolate the dying, checking for vital signs long after the goals of cure have become moot. Doctors, committed to extending life, continue to carry out devastating procedures that in the end extend suffering. Gawande, a practicing surgeon, addresses his profession's ultimate limitation, arguing that quality of life is the desired goal for patients and families.

Kidder, Tracey. Old Friends.New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin, 1993.
Old Friends introduces us to Lou Freed and Joe Torchio, strangers thrust together as roommates. They discover, as Kidder writes, that the problem of Linda Manor is "the universal problem of separateness,” and we watch as, movingly, they set about solving it, with camaraderie and friendship, and ultimately love.

Leland, John. Happiness is a Choice You Make: Lessons from a Year Among the Oldest Old.New York, NY: Sarah Crichton Books, 2018.
In 2015, when the award-winning journalist John Leland set out on behalf of The New York Times to meet members of America's fastest-growing age group, he anticipated learning of challenges, of loneliness, and of the deterioration of body, mind, and quality of life. But the elders he met took him in an entirely different direction. Despite disparate backgrounds and circumstances, they each lived with a surprising lightness and contentment. The reality Leland encountered upended contemporary notions of aging, revealing the late stages of life as unexpectedly rich and the elderly as incomparably wise.

Levintin, Daniel J. Successful Aging: A Neuroscientist Explores the Power and Potential of Our Lives.New York, NY: Dutton Books, 2020.
Successful Aging inspires a powerful new approach to how readers think about our final decades, and it will revolutionize the way we plan for old age as individuals, family members, and citizens within a society where the average life expectancy continues to rise.

Tom, Isabel. The Value of Wrinkles: A Young Perspective on How Loving the Old Will Change Your Life.Chicago, IL: Northfield Publishing, 2020.
It's time to consider how our attitudes towards aging affect our views of the elderly. Isabel Tom grew up in a multigenerational home with her grandparents before beginning a career in the senior care field. She provides amusing anecdotes and insights from these experiences to help young adults embrace aging and intentionally love the old. It's a great loss for the young and old to experience life separately - don't let lack of understanding keep you from delighting in these irreplaceable relationships.