In our prime : the invention of middle age / Patricia Cohen.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cohen, Patricia, 1960-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Middle age.

Middle-aged persons.

Aging--Social aspects.

Aging.

Physical Description:

ix, 306 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Edition:

First Scribner hardcover edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Scribner, 2012.

Summary:

From the author, a New York Times reporter whose beat is culture and ideas, comes a social history of the concept of middle age. For the first time ever, the middle-aged make up the biggest, richest, and most influential segment of the country, yet the history of middle age has remained largely untold. In this book is a biography of the idea of middle age from its invention in the late nineteenth century to its current place at the center of American society, where it shapes the way we view our families, our professional obligations, and our inner lives. The author ranges over the entire landscape of midlife, exploring how its biological, psychological, and social definitions have shifted from one generation to the next. Middle age has been a symbol both of decline and of power and wealth. Explaining why, she takes readers from early-twentieth-century factories that refused to hire middle-aged men to twenty-first-century high-tech laboratories where researchers are currently conducting cutting-edge experiments on the middle-aged brain and body.

Contents:

1: The invention of Middle Age

The prime meridian

Now and then

The tick of the time clock

The renaissance of the middle-aged

The middle-aged body

Middle age enters the modern age

2: Middle age is rediscovered

The sixties and seventies: the era of middle age

Putting middle age on the map

The middle-aged brain

3: The midlife industrial complex

Consuming desire

Middle age medicine

Middle age sex

Complex accomplices

The arrival of the alpha boomer

In our prime.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN:

9781416572893

1416572899

9781416572909

1416572902

9781416579854

1416579850

OCLC:

709673357