Other Cultures, Elder Years

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Holmes and Holmes have revised their 1983 book, and it remains a good supplement for an undergraduate gerontology course or anthropology course. It is written at a readable level, each chapter has a clear summary. . . . It provides an excellent summary of secondary sources, avoiding extensive review of primary research, complicated theory, and methodological issues. --Clinical Gerontologist Hailed as "extremely well organized, balanced, and impartial" in its first edition by The Gerontologist, Other Cultures, Elder Years is once again available in a fully revamped second edition. This new edition provides a comprehensive, comparative viewpoint on our knowledge about worldwide patterns of aging. It addresses everything from demographic patterns to family relations, from perceptions of the life cycle to the impact of modernization on the aged. Replete with summaries of crucial studies from various parts of the world, Other Cultures, Elder Years also offers three extended case descriptions of Inuit, Samoan, and white American aged as well as an examination of aging patterns among major American ethnic groups. Among the other subjects the text addresses are cultural perspectives in health care, the future of aging in America, and creativity and the life cycle. Other Cultures, Elder Years is the key text available for use by anyone teaching courses on aging and culture. "I found the current [book] a significant improvement over the first edition. . . . It remains to be the only usable text in the anthropology of aging available. I see the audiences for the book as instructors for the following courses: Anthropology of Aging, Sociology of Aging, and general social gerontology courses. I have used this book in past Anthropology of Aging courses and would do so again." --Jay Sokolovsky, University of Maryland, Baltimore County "This book does a truly artful job of organizing and presenting the complex diversity of human experience related to aging and cultural influence. . . . This book offers an implicit biocultural laboratory to the reader: the biologic universal of human aging is shaped by the prism of cultural influence. The reader is guided through the evolutionary history of aging among anthropoid primates, to hominids, to Homo sapiens sapiens, who are then examined from cultural perspectives found around the globe. The effect is one of inquiry, search, synthesis, and, ultimately, a confrontation with our inner selves as we negotiate the inexorable march toward our ultimate destiny." --J. Neil Henderson, Suncoast Gerontology Center, University of South Florida