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 Age suggests 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. Reviews: "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 About the Author: A founder of NOW and a vanguard leader of the Women's Movement, Betty Friedan was the author of The Feminine Mystique, It Changed My Life, The Second Stage, Beyond Gender, and The Fountain of Age. She taught at Northwestern University, Yale, Temple, Harvard, and USC. She died in 2006. |
