Robert N. Butler, MD: Visionary of Healthy Aging

Robert Neil Butler (1927–2010) was a scholar, psychiatrist, and Pulitzer Prize–winning author who revolutionized the way the world thinks about aging and the elderly. One of the first psychiatrists to engage with older men and women outside of institutional settings, Butler coined the term "ageism" to draw attention to discrimination against older adults and spent a lifetime working to improve their status, medical treatment, and care.Early in his career, Butler seized on the positive features of late-life development―aspects he documented in his pathbreaking research on "healthy aging" at the National Institutes of Health and in private practice. He set the nation's age-based health care agenda and research priorities as founding director of the National Institute on Aging and by creating the first interprofessional, interdisciplinary department of geriatrics at New York City's Mount Sinai Hospital. In the final two decades of his career, Butler created a global alliance of scientists, educators, practitioners, politicians, journalists, and advocates through the International Longevity Center. A scholar who knew Butler personally and professionally, W. Andrew Achenbaum follows this pioneer's significant contributions to the concept of healthy aging and the notion that aging is not synonymous with physical and mental decline. Emphasizing the progressive aspects of Butler's approach and insight, Achenbaum affirms the ongoing relevance of his work to gerontology, geriatrics, medicine, social work, and related fields.

Biographies & Memoirs

Achenbaum, W. Andrew

Professionals & Academics

Columbia University Press

Following an introduction that outlines the history and projects the future of gerontology, the authors offer insightful profiles of roughly 300 researchers, teachers, and practitioners in aging. North Americans are heavily represented, though gerontologists from Great Britain and the Continent are included as well. The dictionary can be read for an overview of the field, while cross-listings and a complete name and subject index make it an ideal reference. Each entry contains a professional and academic biography, along with citations and succinct descriptions of the individual's important contributions to the study of the elderly and aging.

Profiles in Gerontology: A Biographical Dictionary (Contributions to the Study of)

Albert, Daniel M.

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Greenwood

Franklin Roosevelt envisioned social security to be the cornerstone 'for the kind of protection America wants' from the financial troubles people faced due to old age and family tragedies. By fulfilling its initial promise, social security has evolved into the nation's largest, costliest, and most successful domestic institution. But the optimistic assumptions that inspired its incremental expansion have dissipated in the face of demographic, political, economic, and cultural shifts in American society. Social Security: Visions and Revisions encourages lawmakers, academic experts, and general readers alike to think more broadly and boldly about social security and its relation to public assistance and other income-maintenance and health-care programs. Pulling together information and insights previously scattered and fragmentary, this 1986 book draws lessons from the past that free us of outdated assumptions and unexamined shibboleths. The re-vision of social security that Achenbaum advocates should become the basis of all discussions of government's responsibility to promote 'the general welfare' in our ageing society.

Social Security: Visions and Revisions: A Twentieth Century Fund Study

History

Americas

Cambridge University Press

Gerontology did not emerge as a scientific field of inquiry in the United States until the twentieth century. By tracing intellectual networks and analyzing institutional patterns, Crossing Frontiers shows how old age became a "problem" worth investigating and how a multidisciplinary orientation took shape. Gerontology remains a marginal intellectual enterprise, but its very strengths and weaknesses illuminate the politics of specialization and academic turf-fighting in U.S. higher education.

Crossing Frontiers: Gerontology Emerges as a Science

Older Americans, Vital Communities: A Bold Vision for Societal Aging

This thought-provoking work grapples with the vast range of issues associated with the aging population and challenges people of all ages to think more boldly and more creatively about the relationship between older Americans and their communities. 
W. Andrew Achenbaum begins by exploring the demographics of our aging society and its effect on employment and markets, education, health care, religion, and political action. Drawing on history, literature, and philosophy, Achenbaum focuses on the way health care and increases in life expectancy have transformed late life from a phase characterized by illness, frailty, and debility to one of vitality, productivity, and spirituality. He shows how this transformation of aging is beginning to be felt in programs and policies for aging persons, as communities focus more effort on lifelong learning and extensive civic engagement. 
Concerned that his own undergraduate students are too focused on the immediate future, Achenbaum encourages young people to consider their place in life's social and chronological trajectory. He calls on baby boomers to create institutional structures that promote productive, vital growth for the common good, and he invites people of all ages to think more boldly about what they will do with the long lives ahead of them.

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Johns Hopkins University Press

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Text of brief interpretive essays on gerontological vocabulary, for students and professionals. Discusses current terms common to health and mental health settings, including age discrimination, gray lobby, normal aging, wisdom, sexuality, and others. Softcover.

Key Words in Sociocultural Gerontology

Haber, Carole

Weiland, Steven

Springer Pub. Co

Review\n"Fairy Tale Wisdom contains the personal reflections of three sensitive and intelligent people on a few of the great stories. They put themselves into the tales, or put the tales in them, and offer ways to both appreciate important narratives and make sense of your life, especially as you grow older. I like most the sincere probing that goes on in the reflections of these extraordinary authors." 
— Thomas Moore, author of Care of the Soul and Soul Therapy\n"A refreshing, new and practical approach to traditional stories. Now as elders, the authors return to tales that affected them in childhood, and reflect on the evolving impact the tales had on them. Their comments move from personal history to the perennial questions that inevitably arise, such as the meaning of tragedy and chance in life. Their approach invites sharing with other people and would be invaluable in seminars and workshops." 
— Allan Chinen, M.D., author of In the Ever After and Once Upon a Midlife\n"This revelation of a book invites us to view narratives that formed us in childhood through the lens of maturity. What a pleasure to think about how life has changed us and what matters to us most now. An important and fun contribution to the conscious aging genre." 
— Carol Orsborn, Ph.D., author of The Making of an Old Soul\n"Fairy tales are for all of us. I am simply thrilled by your book and can't wait to share some of the stories with our granddaughters. Fairy Tale Wisdom is an indispensable contribution to this field of work." 
— Harry (Rick) Moody, Ph. D., retired VP for Academic Affairs, AARP\n"This unique and delightful book challenges the reader to pack a bag full of familiar tales and plot lines and travel into the turbulent currents of time's quaint stream. Reading it, I became an active traveler who, along with the three writers, found myself navigating, reinterpreting and reimagining the intersections of stories and self over a lifetime. It's not a book that tells you how to achieve growth and wisdom through age but that brings you along for the ride." 
— Kate de Medeiros, Ph.D., author of Narrative Gerontology in Research and Practice\n"After reading Fairy Tale Wisdom, I doubt you'll see your life or fairy tales in the same way again. The authors' mutual love of and belief in the power of stories to enrich and shape our lives shines through every page. Deeply personal, illuminating the wisdom of each author as they reflect on their chosen tales, you'll find guideposts to help you mine your own stories. Poignant yet playful, this is a beautifully written, evocative book that you can and should pull from your shelf again and again. It is a wonderful meditation on the art of growing older and proof that fairy tales are truly for children of all ages!" 
— Karen Skerrett, Ph.D., Psychologist, Consultant, and author of Growing Married\n"An inspiring, fanciful, and most valuable new resource for exploring later life, Fairy Tale Wisdom is, in the authors' words, 'a way to the light' and thereby serves as an important counterweight to those images of darkness and decline that so often characterize the process of growing old." 
— Mark Freeman, Ph.D., author of Hindsight: The Promise and Peril of Looking Backward\n"This is a fascinating journey through the lens of childhood fairy tales, from a soulful exploration of the authors' life stories to the potential wisdom of later life." 
— Gary Irwin-Kenyon, Ph.D., author of Pathways to Stillness\n"Convene three septuagenarians who decide to revise some of the moral tales that informed their earlier lives, and you have an intriguing prospect. In the words of Nick Thompson, an Apache elder: 'This is what we know about our stories. They go to work on your mind and make you think about your life.' Nothing could more aptly describe how each author thinks about their lives from the perspective they share — their seniority." 
— David Epston, co-author of Reimagining Narrative Therapy through Practice Stories and Autoethnog

Fairy Tale Wisdom: Stories for the Second Half of Life

Lewis, Barbara

Randall, William L.

ElderPress Books

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Books by Achenbaum, W. Andrew