cover image Here Tomorrow: Making the Most of Life After Fifty

Here Tomorrow: Making the Most of Life After Fifty

Janet Belsky. Johns Hopkins University Press, $19.95 (340pp) ISBN 978-0-8018-3718-0

No reader over 50 will want to miss this significant study of the lives of senior citizens by clinical gerontologist Belsky, author of The Psychology of Aging. She argues convincingly that many of the ills of older people are the result of self-fulfilling prophecies: those who think they have declined, physically decline; those who consider that their minds are gone, deteriorate mentally; those who believe that their personalities have become warped, soured or crabbed, develop those kinds of personalities. But this survey proposes that none of this need be, that what are perhaps condescendingly called the golden years can indeed be golden. Belsky also discusses relationships, life changes, housing and the like in this upbeat and impressive book. (Nov.)