Rating: 
Summary: Relevant, but only if...
Review: After trying to figure out why the disenchantment with work as I hit 40, this book has explained it! Although some of the data used is out of date, the findings are still very valid.I recommend it to those trying to figure out how to navigate through life.
Rating: 
Summary: It finally makes sense
Review: After trying to figure out why the disenchantment with work as I hit 40, this book has explained it! Although some of the data used is out of date, the findings are still very valid. I recommend it to those trying to figure out how to navigate through life.
Rating:
Summary: Very insightful - still relevant today
Review: At first I thought this book might not be relevant to me, some 20 years after it was written in a different country. Whilst some of the stereotypical behaviours and social "norms" are different, it is easy to see the translation of the insights to today and in a different country. And while the USA of the 70s is gone this book provided me with a better understanding of some of the (largely unconscious) behaviour of friends, parents and siblings, behaviours which I had not identified or simply taken for granted are now a little easier to fathom. As I read about each life stage I could identify it with those I know and this enabled me to forgive, empathise with and accept a lot which had previously left me hurt and baffled. Although fairly young (35) I can already see some of the patterns at play which Gail describes. I don't care if it's not original work or if the lifetstyles are different and the social pressures altered, this book is still very applicable to those who can objectively view themselves and those around them. This book looks at middle and upper middle class university graduates (called "college" graduates in the US) with primarily professional vocations in accounting, law, medicine etc (stangely little mention of engineers!). Also, I suspect the people are largely private school educated. Whilst people in other circustances might be under different pressures, I have seen similar crises and cycles in a wide range of people. A perceptive reader would learn from this book, nomatter their circumstances.
Rating: 
Summary: Passages need to be passed first...
Review: I first read this book at the ancient age of 27, and it then had little relevency to my budding young life, my passages had been so few...now, at the age of 48, it all looks like a roadmap of my life, much of what Sheehy wrote now makes sense, now comes into focus, now jumps off the page at me...my suggestion is that the book needs to be updated, rewritten from the perspective of one who has actually made the "Passages"...still, the book is remarkable...either Sheehy is the most intuitive person who ever lived, or did research unknown at the time to man/woman...all in all, I find it a book best read once you've been there and done that...otherwise, it means little...unfortunately, I think, it is a work only appreciated in your own personal rearview mirror...reading it as a young man or woman might unduly influence how one's life plays out...but I have every intention of reading it again, and perhaps again...
Rating:
Summary: extremely well detailed......a great work
Review: if the number of times you say 'that makes sense' is anything to go by, then this book definitely rates high up there with me. though about 30-years old now (i'm guessing!) this book was certainly richer and more rewarding than the subsequent sheehy books where there seems to be more gloss and less substance. may be rather context or situation specific; i wonder if anyone not in the crises - particularly midlife, would relate to the book. which is sad, but that's life isn't it?
Rating:
Summary: Universality of Passages
Review: If you are a teacher, or a student of literature, you might consider the connection of Passages to Ibsen's, "A Doll's House," written 120 years ago. Sheehy's book is timeless and imporant literarily and sociologically.
Rating:
Summary: Universality of Passages
Review: If you are a teacher, or a student of literature, you might consider the connection of Passages to Ibsen's, "A Doll's House," written 120 years ago. Sheehy's book is timeless and imporant literarily and sociologically.
Rating:
Summary: Passages book review
Review: My Father gave me the book Passages to read when I was a teenager. I could not put the book down and have referenced it multiple times since then. I am now planning on including it as one of my daughter's highschool graduation presents. It touches your mind, your heart and your soul.
Rating:
Summary: Passages book review
Review: My Father gave me the book Passages to read when I was a teenager. I could not put the book down and have referenced it multiple times since then. I am now planning on including it as one of my daughter's highschool graduation presents. It touches your mind, your heart and your soul.
Rating:
Summary: Still a useful and insightful book
Review: The first time I read Gail Sheehy's book, _Passages_, was back in the 70's when the book first came out. In fact, I think everyone in one of my graduate school psychology classes had read or was reading it before enrolling for our developmental psychology class! It turned out that everyone of us had enrolled in that particular class because of what we had read in _Passages_ and were trying to apply it to our own adult life crises. The book was quite revealing about adult life and what each of us might expect at the turning points of our lives. Now, I am re-reading _Passages_ and I still find the book to be insightful; however from a perspective of twenty-some years down the road, I think that perhaps the book more appropriately describes the "passages" in adult life for a particular generation. I am looking forward to reading Sheehy's sequel, _New Passages_.
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