Young At Heart

Rating:
Summary: Young at Heart: Aging Gracefully with Attitude
Review: A pleasure to read, for both young and old, Anne Crosman's book is based on interviews with 61 elderly Americans who continue to lead active and interesting lives. She asks about their attitudes, beliefs, and the reasons for their longevity.

Their long lives, they say, are the result of remaining active well into their senior years. As Fr. Hesburgh, former president of Notre Dame University, puts it, "Do as MUCH as you can, as WELL as you can, as LONG as you can! Don't gripe about things you can't do anymore." Old age has another plus, says author Elizabeth Kuebler-Ross, the worst is past, "You don't have to go through all the nightmares of life." Author Hank Spalding advises, "Have a hobby, make your hobby or your own job, if nobody wants to hire you because of your age. That's their loss, not yours."

This book is highly recommended for older people who are retired and don't know what to do with all the time on their hands. And for younger people too, who are preparing for their senior years.
Both will benefit from the wise words of others who are making the most of their senior years.

Rating:
Summary: Role models for a new age
Review: By a "new age," I don't mean the Age of Aquarius. I mean... sixty. Sixty will be a new age for me. Statistics say with reasonable luck I should reach that new age, then seventy, and eighty, and with very good luck ninety, and... who knows?

But what will I do? Assuming that I WILL live, HOW will I live?

"Young at Heart: Aging Gracefully with Attitude" consists of fifty-seven or so interviews with good role models. Crosman says she posed them the same question: "What was their secret of living long and well?"

There are no pat answers. Crosman says up front that their secret was "not to dwell on aging," but that's no answer. It just raises the next question, HOW do you do that? The answers--specific, individual, and crackling with energy--come out in the interviews.

The style is journalistic. This, Crosman says, is what old people who are living well do, and how they do it. Most of the interviewees have unsentimental, no-nonsense attitudes. They don't say aging is great. Ruth Christie Stebbins says "This business of hip-hooraying being 100 years old--I say anybody who goes when their 80 years old is the lucky one!"

The book does not consist of abstract advice. It is fact on fact, seemingly prosaic detail on detail. It doesn't feel inspirational in the usual sense; the language is plain and colloquial. And yet something comes through.

If I--well, OK, I can't escape the song lyrics--If I should survive to a hundred and five--nobody is going to be able to tell me what _I_ need to do for myself. But here is what other people are doing. Here are people who have explored that territory and Anne Snowden Crosman has brought their reports back.

I think this book would be a good gift for anyone approaching retirement age.

Oh, the interviews are with Steve Allen, Ray Geiger, Lina Berle, Malcolm Boyd, Sammy Cahn, Ressa Clute, Elizabeth and Edmund Campbell, Servando Trujillo, Nien Cheng, Paul Spangler, Georgie Clark, Monk Farnham, Marjory Stonman Douglas, Aveline and Michio Kushi, Edmund deTreville Ellis, Martha Griffiths, Dale Evans and Roy Rogers, Jeanne Beattie Butts, J. William Fulbright, Maggie Kuhn, Patric Hayes, Lillie and Ralph Douglass, Skitch henderson, Helen Kearnes Richards, Theodore Hesburgh, Ruth Warrick, Hildegarde, John Hench, Evelyn Bryan Johnson, Richard Erdoes, George jones, Lucille Lortel, Ethel Keohane, Michael Werboff, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, J. R. Simplot, Art Linkletter, Mary Sherwood, Sarah Newcomb McClendon, Russell Meyers, Ruth Schick Montgomery, Margaret Chase Smith, Gordon Parks, Ruth Christie Stebbins, Les Paul, John Lautner, Linus Pauling, Jewel Plummer Cobb, Ruth Stafford Peale, Maurice Abravanel, Hank Spalding, Marjorie van Ouwerkerk Miley, Benjamin Spock, Dorthy Davis Bohannon, Billy Taylor, Molly Yard, and Helen Ver Standig.

Rating:
Summary: A witty anthology of zesty insights
Review: Compiled by Anne Snowden Crosman, Young At Heart is a witty anthology of zesty insights drawn from sixty-one extraordinary men and women, each of whom focuses their remarks upon the issue of defying age and living life to the fullest. Words of wisdom from Steve Allen, Benjamin Spock, Hildegarde, Roy Rogers, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross (and 56 other men and women), fill the pages of this upbeat, inspiring, energetic, celebration of our glorious golden years.

Rating:
Summary: Do yourself a favor, read this book.
Review: How could Young At Heart be anything but inspiring, entertaining and enlightening considering the variety of amazing talents who contributed the wisdom of their years and experiences? After reading Young At Heart, I gave copies to friends and relatives for Christmas. Every one of them thanked me again after they began reading. My parents, in their mid 70's, are noticeably changed. It was the jump-start they needed to think more positively about their ages and to get them out doing things again. It has also helped me to have a more positive outlook for myself and my parents. In Young At Heart, people in their 80's, 90's and even 100's with varied interests and physical abilities explain why they still look forward to each new day. I hope young adults will discover Young At Heart and it's lessons to live by. You'll want to keep this upbeat book close at hand to read over and over. Thank you Anne Snowden Crosman for Young At Heart.

Rating:
Summary: comfort zone
Review: I find comfort in the fact that it has been shown by the book that there are many ways to live and look at life. I believe that being called old is not a sign of disrespect but an acknowledgement of survival and joy. I have learned far more from the old folks than I could have on my own. Read the book very close and you will see that almost all are childlike in the way that they enjoy life. You have to love the way they look at the young, with respect and love. I would love to meet these people and thank you for showing them to me.

Rating:
Summary: Good first effort
Review: I had high hopes for this book - I had planned to give it to my parents - but it was just average. The cover graphic attracted me, and some of the stories of the seniors are interesting, but it became repetitive fairly quickly. I didn't really learn a lot of new information about some of the celebrities profiled, such as Steve Allen or Roy Rogers and Dale Evans. And I wonder if people who read this would appreciate being called "old" which prevented me from giving this as a gift to friends. A good effort, but I think it fell short of its objective. This appears to be a self published book that would have benefited from an independent editor to assit the author in keeping the interest throughout.

Rating:
Summary: OLD BUT NEVER BORING
Review: I purchased this book as a gift for my aunt who is 84 years old and found myself drawn to the interviews of the elderly persons included in its pages.

While many of them are well known -Steve Allen, Art Linkletter, Roy Rgers and Dale Evans - my interest gravitated to the passages that dealt with persons unknown to me such as the Campbells, Marjory Stonman Douglas and Sarah Newcomb McClendon.

Reading this book reminded me, as my aunt and the persons interviewed seem to realize, that secrets to aging well must include curiosity and the pursuit of work and activities that one enjoys.

I would recommend this book to anyone who might feel that life ceases to be interesting after a "certain age". These stories do prove such is not the case.

Rating:
Summary: Do yourself a favor, read this book.
Review: What are he secrets to having a fulfilling and fruitful life? Anne Crosman's beautifully written "Young at Heart" gives the answers, based on very revealing interviews with 61 "long-lived" (Chinese for "old") remarkable personalities--local activists, celebrities, citizen patriots, neighbors next door. Crosman perceptively teases out their passion for family and work, flexibility and receptiveness to new ideas and experiences, and their bouyant optimism, even in the face of adversity. The author is an experienced world-traveling journalist. During this decade-long project she accompanied Evelyn Bryan Johnson (age 84) in her Cessna, braved the Colorado River rapids on a raft with Georgie Clark (80), captured Linus Pauling's (91) boyish curiosity and devotion to Vitamin C, and, in her best interview among many gems, got Theodore Hesburgh (84) to reveal how he focuses on the essentials, exercises, maintains a spiritual life, works incessantly for global peace, and, above all, hangs out with youngsters. Playfulness, good humor, and goals, goals, goals are qualities that cut across the lives of the familiar--Steve Allen, Sammy Cahn, Gordon Parks, Margaret Chase Smith, Benjamin Spoke, William Fulbright--and Ethel Keohane (master bridge player), Maggie Kuhn (Gray Panthers), and less familiar but remarkably accomplished and energetic individuals. These qualiaties are only a few of the attitudes that these and other remarkable sages reveal to Crosman. "Young at Heart" is definitely the book to give to grumpy and not-so grumpy elders and their families for the holidays, and to read before the wrapping.

Rating:
Summary: Joyful living of the young in "long-lived" bodies
Review: What are he secrets to having a fulfilling and fruitful life? Anne Crosman's beautifully written "Young at Heart" gives the answers, based on very revealing interviews with 61 "long-lived" (Chinese for "old") remarkable personalities--local activists, celebrities, citizen patriots, neighbors next door. Crosman perceptively teases out their passion for family and work, flexibility and receptiveness to new ideas and experiences, and their bouyant optimism, even in the face of adversity. The author is an experienced world-traveling journalist. During this decade-long project she accompanied Evelyn Bryan Johnson (age 84) in her Cessna, braved the Colorado River rapids on a raft with Georgie Clark (80), captured Linus Pauling's (91) boyish curiosity and devotion to Vitamin C, and, in her best interview among many gems, got Theodore Hesburgh (84) to reveal how he focuses on the essentials, exercises, maintains a spiritual life, works incessantly for global peace, and, above all, hangs out with youngsters. Playfulness, good humor, and goals, goals, goals are qualities that cut across the lives of the familiar--Steve Allen, Sammy Cahn, Gordon Parks, Margaret Chase Smith, Benjamin Spoke, William Fulbright--and Ethel Keohane (master bridge player), Maggie Kuhn (Gray Panthers), and less familiar but remarkably accomplished and energetic individuals. These qualiaties are only a few of the attitudes that these and other remarkable sages reveal to Crosman. "Young at Heart" is definitely the book to give to grumpy and not-so grumpy elders and their families for the holidays, and to read before the wrapping.