New Passages

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Summary: Our beliefs shape our future....
Review: "New Passages" gave me added enthusiasm as well as an explanation for what I, a woman at age 50, am feeling and experiencing. How wonderful that I am metamorphosing into a "second adulthood!" That the last few years of culling out what I don't want to do are leading towards a powerful purpose: living the rest of my life with ever-greater meaning and enjoyment. As with "The Silent Passage," which has given so many men and women a healthier perspective of menopause, "New Passages" has helped define a brighter and more exciting future for all of us who are growing into our 50'and beyond. Even my 86 year old mother understands better where she has been in her "2nd adulthood," enabling her to define the significance of her continuing life....to just live in integrity and serve as an example for all those around her. Sheehy quoted research which shows that our genetic heritage profoundly affects us until 60-65....but, after that, what we think and beleve is what most profoundly affects how well we live. As in golf, "the game" is controlled by the 6" between our ears....

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Summary: Baby Boomers Unite! We DO Want It Now!
Review: .

Any kind of riders

on any kind of storm,

use what you want,

discard the rest.

Stick with honest-to-God's truth: God.

Cheer yourselves on with that Julia Roberts' tornado enthusiasm,

that full-bodied, knuckles-to-the-universe

"Whoh! Whoh! Whoh! Whoh! Whoh!"

Love,

Kerrie

.

Rating:
Summary: Mapping this book against time
Review: Conceptually excellent, but a dismally dreary read.

Ever been at a cocktail party where you meet someone who tells an interesting story, but takes half an hour to do it, because of all the needless peripheral information. Sheehy personified. She fails to hold my attention with tediously drawn-out examples which lack pith and focus. An good editor would halve the length and double the value. The content is not bad, it just takes so damn long to get to the point.

Very Ameri-centric.

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Summary: She keeps going and going and going....
Review: Gail Sheehy provides a new perspective on aging...yet she repeats the same points continuously throughout the book. You get the main idea of her whole book in the prologue and learn nothing more after. If you are under 40 this will bore and depress you like nothing else.

Rating:
Summary: Powerful Book!
Review: Half way reading this book, and I had to give it a thumbs up already. Sheehy's analysis and narrative is hard hitting and brilliant. Your very life passage is written out in this book. Virtually everyone will identify with at least one of her narratives/passages. A must read for anyone interested in the philosophical aspects of LIFE!

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Summary: New Passages Really Helped
Review: I found Sheehy's second "Passages" book almost as good as the first. As an aging baby boomer, the issues of recharting my life direction at middle age has been daunting to say the least. Second Passages provided the structure for this process. I also suggest "The Second Journey" by T. Athey as another good book - more focus on the issues of the Baby Boomer generation.

Platonix

Rating:
Summary: New Passages Really Helped
Review: I found Sheehy's second "Passages" book almost as good as the first. As an aging baby boomer, the issues of recharting my life direction at middle age has been daunting to say the least. Second Passages provided the structure for this process. I also suggest "The Second Journey" by T. Athey as another good book - more focus on the issues of the Baby Boomer generation.

Platonix

Rating:
Summary: WOW! Couldn't put it down!
Review: Sheehy makes sense out of all of this. It's about time women understood and recognized more about our passages and how they affect our lives.

Rating:
Summary: a disappointing contribution to life-stage theory
Review: Sheehy offers an interesting categorization of life stages in the context of American life as she has known it and lived it. She uses excerpts from the hundreds of interviews she conducted throughout the United States while preparing this book to prove her theory. Her stages have catchy labels: Tryout Twenties, Turbulent Thirties, Flourishing Forties, Flaming Fifties, Serene Sixties. Sheehy's attempt to make meaning of the mature years is most likely to become an artifact of its era, unable to cross cultures or time. Her passages depend too heavily on life as it is being lived in the 1990s in the United States of America. With the work of Erikson and Jung on developmental aging already on the book shelf and thoughtful contributions by such as Friedan, Schacter-Shalomi and Miller, and others, Sheehy's contribution is disappointing.