Overview

At a time when many people around the world are living into their tenth decade, the longest longitudinal study of human development ever undertaken offers some welcome news for the new old age: our lives continue to evolve in our later years and often become more fulfilling than before. Begun in 1938, the Grant Study of Adult Development charted the physical and emotional health of over two hundred men, starting with their undergraduate days. The now-classic Adaptation to Life reported on the men's lives up to age fifty-five and helped us understand adult maturation. Now George Vaillant follows the men into their nineties, documenting for the first time what it is like to flourish far beyond conventional retirement. Reporting on all aspects of male life--including relationships, politics and religion, coping strategies, and alcohol use--Triumphs of Experience shares a number of surprising findings. For example, the people who do well in old age did not necessarily do so well in midlife and vice versa. While the study confirms that recovery from a lousy childhood is possible, memories of a happy childhood are a lifelong source of strength. Marriages bring much more contentment after age seventy, and physical aging after eighty is determined less by heredity than by habits formed prior to age fifty. The credit for growing old with grace and vitality, it seems, goes more to ourselves than to our stellar genetic makeup.

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9781482973242

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George E. Vaillant, MD, is a psychoanalyst and a research psychiatrist, one of the pioneers in the study of adult development. He is a professor at Harvard University and directed Harvard's Study of Adult Development for thirty-five years. He is the author of Aging Well, Triumphs of Experience, and The Natural History of Alcoholism, and his 1977 book, Adaptation to Life, is a classic text in the study of adult development. He lives in Orange, California, but works part time at Massachusetts General Hospital. Don Hagen has been behind the microphone since fifth grade. He is a nine-time winner of the Peer Award for narration/voice-over and twice winner of an AudioFile Earphones Award. He has also been heard in radio and television commercials and documentaries. In addition to his freelance voice work, he is a member of the audiobook narration team at the Library of Congress.

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