Aging in the Past

Aging in the Past PDF Author: David I. Kertzer
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520377109
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 427

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Book Description
Thanks to improved food, medicine, and living conditions, the average age of the population is increasing throughout the modern industrialized world. Yet, despite the recent upsurge of scholarly interest in the lives of older people and the blossoming of historical demography, little historical demographic attention has been paid to the lives of the elderly. A landmark volume, Aging in the Past marks the emergence of the historical demographic study of aging. Following a masterly explication of the new field by Peter Laslett, leading scholars in family history and historical demography offer new research results and fresh analyses that greatly increase our understanding of aging, historically and across cultures. Focusing primarily on post-Industrial Europe and the United States, they explore a range of issues under the broad topics of living arrangements, widowhood, and retirement and mortality. This important work provides a much-needed historical perspective on and suggests possible alternative solutions to the problems of the aged. Contributors: George Alter, Rudolf Andorka, Allen C. Goodman, Myron P. Gutmann, Michael R. Haines, E. A. Hammel, Tamara K. Hareven, Nancy Karweit, David I. Kertzer, Peter Laslett, Andrejs Plakans, Roger L. Ransom, Daniel Scott Smith, Richard Sutch, Peter Uhlenberg, Richard Wall, Charles Wetherell This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1995.

Aging in the Past

Aging in the Past PDF Author: David I. Kertzer
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520377109
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 427

Get Book

Book Description
Thanks to improved food, medicine, and living conditions, the average age of the population is increasing throughout the modern industrialized world. Yet, despite the recent upsurge of scholarly interest in the lives of older people and the blossoming of historical demography, little historical demographic attention has been paid to the lives of the elderly. A landmark volume, Aging in the Past marks the emergence of the historical demographic study of aging. Following a masterly explication of the new field by Peter Laslett, leading scholars in family history and historical demography offer new research results and fresh analyses that greatly increase our understanding of aging, historically and across cultures. Focusing primarily on post-Industrial Europe and the United States, they explore a range of issues under the broad topics of living arrangements, widowhood, and retirement and mortality. This important work provides a much-needed historical perspective on and suggests possible alternative solutions to the problems of the aged. Contributors: George Alter, Rudolf Andorka, Allen C. Goodman, Myron P. Gutmann, Michael R. Haines, E. A. Hammel, Tamara K. Hareven, Nancy Karweit, David I. Kertzer, Peter Laslett, Andrejs Plakans, Roger L. Ransom, Daniel Scott Smith, Richard Sutch, Peter Uhlenberg, Richard Wall, Charles Wetherell This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1995.

Aging and Old Age

Aging and Old Age PDF Author: Richard A. Posner
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226675688
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
Observing that people change both physically and cognitively as they age, Posner suggests that each of us has, in succession, two separate selves - younger and older - with different abilities, interests, and behaviors, an insight that helps clarify a number of issues concerning the elderly.

Aging in World History

Aging in World History PDF Author: David G. Troyansky
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317381416
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
In Aging in World History, David G. Troyansky presents the first global history of aging. At a time when demographic aging has become a source of worldwide concern, and more people are reaching an advanced age than ever before, the history of old age helps us understand how we arrived at the treatment of aging in the modern world. This concise volume expands that history beyond the West to show how attitudes toward aging, the experiences of the aged, and relevant demographic patterns have varied and coalesced over time and across the world. From the ancient world to the present, this book introduces students and general readers to the history of aging on two levels: the experience of individual men and women, and the transformation of populations. With its attention to cultural traditions, medicalization, decades of historical scholarship, and current gerontology, Aging in World History is the perfect starting point for an exploration of this increasingly universal aspect of human experience.

Old Age in English History

Old Age in English History PDF Author: Pat Thane
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191542172
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 548

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Book Description
At the end of the twentieth century more people are living into their seventies, eighties, nineties and beyond, a process expected to continue well into the next millennium. The twentieth century has achieved what people in other centuries only dreamed of: many can now expect to survive to old age in reasonably good health and can remain active and independent to the end, in contrast to the high death rate, ill health and destitution which affected all ages in the past. Yet this change is generally greeted not with triumph but with alarm. It is assumed that the longer people live, the longer they are ill and dependent, thus burdening a shrinking younger generation with the cost of pensions and health care. It is also widely believed that 'the past' saw few survivors into old age and these could be supported by their families without involving the taxpayer. In this first survey of old age throughout English history, these assumptions are challenged. Vivid pictures are given of the ways in which very large numbers of older people lived often vigorous and independent lives over many centuries. The book argues that old people have always been highly visible in English communities, and concludes that as people live longer due to the benefits of the rise in living standards, far from being 'burdens' they can be valuable contributors to their family and friends.

Aging in the Past

Aging in the Past PDF Author: David I. Kertzer
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520413865
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 426

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Book Description
Thanks to improved food, medicine, and living conditions, the average age of the population is increasing throughout the modern industrialized world. Yet, despite the recent upsurge of scholarly interest in the lives of older people and the blossoming of historical demography, little historical demographic attention has been paid to the lives of the elderly. A landmark volume, Aging in the Past marks the emergence of the historical demographic study of aging. Following a masterly explication of the new field by Peter Laslett, leading scholars in family history and historical demography offer new research results and fresh analyses that greatly increase our understanding of aging, historically and across cultures. Focusing primarily on post-Industrial Europe and the United States, they explore a range of issues under the broad topics of living arrangements, widowhood, and retirement and mortality. This important work provides a much-needed historical perspective on and suggests possible alternative solutions to the problems of the aged. Contributors: George Alter, Rudolf Andorka, Allen C. Goodman, Myron P. Gutmann, Michael R. Haines, E. A. Hammel, Tamara K. Hareven, Nancy Karweit, David I. Kertzer, Peter Laslett, Andrejs Plakans, Roger L. Ransom, Daniel Scott Smith, Richard Sutch, Peter Uhlenberg, Richard Wall, Charles Wetherell This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1995.

Old Age

Old Age PDF Author: Michael Kinsley
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 1101903767
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 162

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Book Description
Vanity Fair columnist Michael Kinsley escorts his fellow Boomers through the door marked "Exit." The notorious baby boomers—the largest age cohort in history—are approaching the end and starting to plan their final moves in the game of life. Now they are asking: What was that all about? Was it about acquiring things or changing the world? Was it about keeping all your marbles? Or is the only thing that counts after you’re gone the reputation you leave behind? In this series of essays, Michael Kinsley uses his own battle with Parkinson’s disease to unearth answers to questions we are all at some time forced to confront. “Sometimes,” he writes, “I feel like a scout from my generation, sent out ahead to experience in my fifties what even the healthiest Boomers are going to experience in their sixties, seventies, or eighties.” This surprisingly cheerful book is at once a fresh assessment of a generation and a frequently funny account of one man’s journey toward the finish line. “The least misfortune can do to make up for itself is to be interesting,” he writes. “Parkinson’s disease has fulfilled that obligation.”

Learning to Be Old

Learning to Be Old PDF Author: Margaret Cruikshank
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 0742565955
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
What does it mean to grow old in America today? Is 'successful aging' our responsibility? What will happen if we fail to 'grow old gracefully'? Especially for women, the onus on the aging population in the United States is growing rather than diminishing. Gender, race, and sexual orientation have been reinterpreted as socially constructed phenomena, yet aging is still seen through physically constructed lenses. The second edition of Margaret Cruikshank's Learning to Be Old helps put aging in a new light, neither romanticizing nor demonizing it. Featuring new research and analysis, expanded sections on gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender aging and critical gerontology, and an updated chapter on feminist gerontology, the second edition even more thoroughly than the first looks at the variety of different forces affecting the progress of aging. Cruikshank pays special attention to the fears and taboos, multicultural traditions, and the medicalization and politicization of natural processes that inform our understanding of age. Through it all, we learn a better way to inhabit our age whatever it is.

Rethinking Aging

Rethinking Aging PDF Author: Nortin M. Hadler, M.D.
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 9780807869239
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
For those fortunate enough to reside in the developed world, death before reaching a ripe old age is a tragedy, not a fact of life. Although aging and dying are not diseases, older Americans are subject to the most egregious marketing in the name of "successful aging" and "long life," as if both are commodities. In Rethinking Aging, Nortin M. Hadler examines health-care choices offered to aging Americans and argues that too often the choices serve to profit the provider rather than benefit the recipient, leading to the medicalization of everyday ailments and blatant overtreatment. Rethinking Aging forewarns and arms readers with evidence-based insights that facilitate health-promoting decision making. Over the past decade, Hadler has established himself as a leading voice among those who approach the menu of health-care choices with informed skepticism. Only the rigorous demonstration of efficacy is adequate reassurance of a treatment's value, he argues; if it cannot be shown that a particular treatment will benefit the patient, one should proceed with caution. In Rethinking Aging, Hadler offers a doctor's perspective on the medical literature as well as his long clinical experience to help readers assess their health-care options and make informed medical choices in the last decades of life. The challenges of aging and dying, he eloquently assures us, can be faced with sophistication, confidence, and grace.

On Old Age

On Old Age PDF Author: Christian Krötzl
Publisher: Brepols Publishers
ISBN: 9782503532165
Category : Civilization, Classical
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Research into old age and dying in the pre-modern world has examined not only the demographic aspects of ageing populations but also the social role of aged people. The volume, with its diverse topics, cuts across traditional scholarly barriers and provides valuable analytical tools for further studies on the subject.

Demography of Aging

Demography of Aging PDF Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309050855
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 424

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Book Description
As the United States and the rest of the world face the unprecedented challenge of aging populations, this volume draws together for the first time state-of-the-art work from the emerging field of the demography of aging. The nine chapters, written by experts from a variety of disciplines, highlight data sources and research approaches, results, and proposed strategies on a topic with major policy implications for labor forces, economic well-being, health care, and the need for social and family supports.