Here is Passages II, an upbeat, fact-filled, people-rich, but ultimately unsatisfying sequel to the 1976 bestseller. Sheehy's earlier Passages borrowed from Erik Erikson and Daniel Levinson of Yale to popularize the theory that the lives of adults as well as children are marked by stages of development, such as the Trying Twenties and Catch-30, until age 50, when it's smooth sailing. Well, Sheehy is in her 50s now and encountering some rough waters, so she's added a few more stagesthe Flaming Fifties, the Uninhibited Eightiesto her earlier scenario. Moreover, she declares, ``There is a revolution in the life cycle.'' Puberty arrives sooner, and adolescence lasts longer. ``First Adulthood'' begins around 30, segueing into ``Second Adulthood,'' which lasts from about ages 45 to 85. During that time, women struggle with menopauseand perhaps, she suggests provocatively, so do men. Both reframe their lives, women pushing the envelope on their careers and men often confronting corporate downsizing. Age 50 is also fraught with crises of mortality and meaning, giving passage to the Serene Sixties and Sage Seventies. Throughout are rich interviews with both working class and white collar/professional men and women copingnot always successfullywith the stresses of growing older. The flaw in this book lies in the very reason Sheehy wrote it. Labeling generations (``Silent,'' ``Vietnam,'' ``Endangered'') and relabeling Erikson's Age of Generativity as the Age of Integrity mask the fact that life cycle changes are happening so fast that it's too soon to develop a perspective. Sheehy's confidence in the efficacy of exercise, a healthy lifestyle, and an optimistic attitude to hold back the effects of aging is well placed. But these constitute only one step in combating society's aversion to people with wrinkles and walkers, to say nothing of the millions of elderly living below the poverty line. A mix of inventive speculation and solid informationon impotence and menopause among the latterbut its impact is diluted by horoscope-like predictions and (though Sheehy surveyed thousands of people) a penchant for presenting anecdote as evidence. (Author tour)
Pub Date: June 21, 1995
ISBN: 0-394-58913-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1995
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
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