Synopses & Reviews
In this book, an award-winning journalist tells the story of people devising innovative ways to live as they approach retirement, options that ensure they are surrounded by a circle of friends, family, and neighbors. Based on visits and interviews at many communities around the country, Beth Baker weaves a rich tapestry of grassroots alternatives, some of them surprisingly affordable
-- an affordable mobile home cooperative in small-town Oregon
-- a senior artists colony in Los Angeles
-- neighbors helping neighbors in "Villages" or "naturally occurring retirement communities"
-- intentional cohousing communities
-- best friends moving in together
-- multigenerational families that balance togetherness and privacy
-- niche communities including such diverse groups as retired postal workers, gays and lesbians, and Zen Buddhists.
Drawing on new research showing the importance of social support to healthy aging and the risks associated with loneliness and isolation, the author encourages the reader to plan for a future with strong connections. Baker explores whether individuals in declining health can really stay rooted in their communities through the end of life and concludes by examining the challenge of expanding the home-care workforce and the potential of new technologies like webcams and assistive robots.
This book is the recipient of the annual Norman L. and Roselea J. Goldberg Prize for the best project in the area of medicine.
Review
"
With a Little Help from Our Friends is a thoughtful and clear-eyed look at the opportunities and challenges of aging in community. Every Baby Boomer who wants to 'age in place' should read this book. So should their children."
--Howard Gleckman, author of Caring for Our Parents, Resident Fellow, the Urban Institute
Review
"With a Little Help from Our Friends is timely and instructive. By weaving together stories about nine ways to think about community building, Beth Baker helps Boomers imagine alternatives as they prepare for living arrangements more permanent than Woodstock and less scary than where their (grand)parents ended up." --W. Andrew Achenbaum, Deputy Director of the Consortium on Aging at the University of Texas Medical School
Review
"Beth Baker courageously and empathetically asks the question many Baby Boomers avoid: How will we make it through our aging years with dignity, independence and pleasure? The answers she receives from folks around the US, straight and LGBT, reassure us that there are already promising paths being carved."
--Michele Kort, Senior Editor, Ms. Magazine
Review
"The audience for this must-read book is boomers—and everyone else."
--Library Journal
Synopsis
Experiments from across the country with new living arrangements that balance independence and community as one grows older
About the Author
Beth Baker, a long-time freelance writer whose work has appeared in the Washington Post, AARP Bulletin, Washingtonian, and Ms. Magazine, is the features editor of BioScience, the journal of the American Institute of Biological Sciences. Baker is the author of Old Age in a New