Young at Heart: Aging Gracefully with Attitude

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.