Synopses & Reviews
Review
'One could not ask for a more learned or compassionate guide to the mysteries of aging than Thomas R. Cole.' New York Times Book Review
Review
'Thomas R. Cole's fascinating study, The Journey of Life, is not so much the history of aging per se, but of attitudes toward it and toward those to whom old age happens. It is therefore necessarily also about American attitudes toward the past and future and the underlying nature of wisdom. The book is exhaustive, its line of development persuasive. It reflects a continuing ambiguity and multiplicity of attitudes in society at every stage.' Boston Globe
Review
'Cole makes a powerful case for the proposition that we can no longer afford the illusions about aging that we have inherited from the 19th century.' Christopher Lasch, University of Rochester
Synopsis
'The Journey of Life is both a cultural history of aging and a contribution to public dialogue about the meaning and significance of later life. The core of the book shows how central texts and images of Northern middle-class culture created and sustained specifically modern images of the life course between the Reformation and World War I.\n
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Table of Contents
List of illustrations; Preface; Introduction; Part I. The Ages of Life and the Journey of Life: Transcendental Ideals: 1. Aging in the Western tradition: cultural origins of the modern life course; 2. The aging pilgrim's progress in the New World; 3. 'Death without order': the late Calvinist ideal of aging; Part II. The Dualism of Aging in Victorian America: 4. Antebellum revivals and Victorian morals: the ideological origins of ageism; 5. Popular health reform and the legitimation of longevity, 1830-1870; 6. Aging, popular art, and Romantic religion in mid-Victorian culture; 7. In a different voice: self-help and the ideal of 'civilized' old age, 1850-1910; Part III. Science and the Ideal of Normal Aging: 8. The aging of 'civilized' morality: the fixed period versus prolongevity, 1870-1925; 9. Toward the scientific management of aging: the formative literature of gerontology and geriatrics, 1890-1930; 10. The prophecy of Senescence: G. Stanley Hall and the reconstruction of old age; Epilogue: beyond dualism and control - reflections on aging in postmodern culture; Index.