Fountain of Age [Paperback]

Struggling to hold on to the illusion of youth, Friedan wrote, we have denied the reality and evaded the new triumphs of growing older. We have seen age only as decline. In this powerful and very personal book, Betty Friedan charted her own voyage of discovery, and that of others, into a different kind of aging.

Friedan found ordinary men and women, moving into their fifties, sixties, seventies, discovering extraordinary new possibilities of intimacy and purpose. In their surprising experiences, Friedan first glimpsed, then embraced, the idea that one can grow and evolve throughout life in a style that dramatically mitigates the expectation of decline and opens the way to a further dimension of personhood.

The Fountain of Agesuggests new possibilities for every one of us, all founded on a solid body of startling but little-known scientific evidence. It demolishes those myths that have constrained us for too long and offers compelling alternatives for living one's age as a unique, exuberant time of life, on its own authentic terms. Important and inspiring.... Anyone troubled by fears of aging, of disease, of deteriorating faculties -- or anyone who is trapped in a futile denial of mortality -- will find solace in Friedan's monumental exposure of the 'mystique of aging,' and will perhaps share her sense of liberation in meeting the challenge of the 'third age.'...Encouraging as well as provocative,The Fountain of Ageis a groundbreaking book to be read slowly and pondered deeply.
--Detroit News With her usual methodical research and forthright insights, author and feminist Betty Friedan brilliantly challenges the unspeakable.... Friedan dissects the clichés of senility and impairment to reveal a multitude of joys and options that actually exist in the continuum of life she calls the 'Third Age.'
--Chicago Tribune