In 1959, a Black man named Eldrewey Stearns was beaten by Houston police after being stopped for a traffic violation. He was not the first to suffer such brutality, but the incident sparked Stearns's conscience and six months later he was leading the first sit-in west of the Mississippi River. No Color Is My Kind, first published in 1997, introduced readers to Stearns, including his work as a civil rights leader and lawyer in Houston's desegregation movement between 1959 and 1963. This remarkable and important history, however, was nearly lost to bipolar affective disorder. Stearns was a fifty-two-year-old patient in a Galveston psychiatric hospital when Thomas Cole first met him in 1984. Over the course of a decade, Cole and Stearns slowly recovered the details of Stearns's life before his slide into mental illness, writing a story that is more relevant today than ever. In this new edition, Cole fills in the gaps between the late 1990s and now, providing an update on the progress of civil rights in Houston and Stearns himself. He also reflects on his tumultuous and often painful collaboration with Stearns, challenging readers to be part of his journey to understand the struggles of a Black man's complex life. At once poignant, tragic, and emotionally charged, No Color Is My Kind is essential reading as the current movement for racial reconciliation gathers momentum.

This textbook brings the humanities to students in order to evoke the humanity of students. It helps to form individuals who take charge of their own minds, who are free from narrow and unreflective forms of thought, and who act compassionately in their public and professional worlds. Using concepts and methods of the humanities, the book addresses undergraduate and premed students, medical students, and students in other health professions, as well as physicians and other healthcare practitioners. It encourages them to consider the ethical and existential issues related to the experience of disease, care of the dying, health policy, religion and health, and medical technology. Case studies, images, questions for discussion, and role-playing exercises help readers to engage in the practical, interpretive, and analytical aspects of the material, developing skills for critical thinking as well as compassionate care.

The Journey of Life is both a cultural history of aging and a contribution to public dialogue about the meaning and significance of later life. The core of the book shows how central texts and images of Northern middle-class culture, first in Europe and then in America, created and sustained specifically modern images of the life course between the Reformation and World War I. During this long period, secular, scientific and individualist tendencies steadily eroded ancient and medieval understandings of aging as a mysterious part of the eternal order of things. In the last quarter of the twentieth century, however, postmodern images of life's journey offer a renewed awareness of the spiritual dimensions of later life and new opportunities for growth in an aging society.

This textbook brings the humanities to students in order to evoke the humanity of students. It helps to form individuals who take charge of their own minds, who are free from narrow and unreflective forms of thought, and who act compassionately in their public and professional worlds. Using concepts and methods of the humanities, the book addresses undergraduate and premed students, medical students, and students in other health professions, as well as physicians and other healthcare practitioners. It encourages them to consider the ethical and existential issues related to the experience of disease, care of the dying, health policy, religion and health, and medical technology. Case studies, images, questions for discussion, and role-playing exercises help readers to engage in the practical, interpretive, and analytical aspects of the material, developing skills for critical thinking as well as compassionate care.

We live in a time of change, an era where old men can be celebrated as elders who are valued but who are not demeaned if they become ill and dependent. Where we aim to maintain health but find dignity in frailty. Old Man Country helps readers see and imagine this change for themselves. The book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom, as he narrates encounters with twelve distinguished American men over 80 - including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world's most famous heart surgeon. In these and other intimate conversations, the book explores and honors the particular way that each man faces four challenges of living a good old age: Am I Still a Man? Do I Still Matter? What is the Meaning of My Life? Am I Loved? Readers will come to see how each man - even the most famous - faces challenges that are every man's challenges. Personal yet universal stories about work, love, sexuality, and hope mingle with stories about illness, loss and death. These stories will strengthen each of us as we anticipate and navigate our way through the passages of old age.

In 1959, a Black man named Eldrewey Stearns was beaten by Houston police after being stopped for a traffic violation. He was not the first to suffer such brutality, but the incident sparked Stearns’s conscience and six months later he was leading the first sit-in west of the Mississippi River. No Color Is My Kind, first published in 1997, introduced readers to Stearns, including his work as a civil rights leader and lawyer in Houston’s desegregation movement between 1959 and 1963. This remarkable and important history, however, was nearly lost to bipolar affective disorder. Stearns was a fifty-two-year-old patient in a Galveston psychiatric hospital when Thomas Cole first met him in 1984. Over the course of a decade, Cole and Stearns slowly recovered the details of Stearns’s life before his slide into mental illness, writing a story that is more relevant today than ever. In this new edition, Cole fills in the gaps between the late 1990s and now, providing an update on the progress of civil rights in Houston and Stearns himself. He also reflects on his tumultuous and often painful collaboration with Stearns, challenging readers to be part of his journey to understand the struggles of a Black man’s complex life. At once poignant, tragic, and emotionally charged, No Color Is My Kind is essential reading as the current movement for racial reconciliation gathers momentum.

A critical gerontology requires more than a simple elaboration of existing humanistic scholarship on aging. This exceptional new work introduces a basis for genuine dialogue across humanistic, scientific, and professional disciplines. Among the topics addressed are industrial employment, retirement, life styles of older women, and biological research. From philosophical reflections on the "third age" to critical perspectives on institutional adaptations to an aging society, this book presents a wide range of provocative thought.

In What Does It Mean to Grow Old? essayists come to grips as best they can with the phenomenon of an America that is about to become the Old Country. They have been drawn from every relevant discipline--gerontology, social medicine, politics, health, anthropology, ethics, law--and asked to speak their mind. Most of them write extremely well and their] sharply individual voices are heard.

This volume explores the moral, spiritual, and cultural terrain of aging through interdisciplinary scholarship and clinically based research.

Aging has long been of interest to scholars and practitioners in a vast array of academic fields and professions. Thomas R. Cole, Ruth E. Ray, and Robert Kastenbaum have brought together leaders from a variety of academic realms to explore how aging is depicted in the modern era and the effect of these portrayals on individuals and society.

The first section views aging and old age through the lenses of four disciplines: history, literature, religion, and philosophy. It probes the idea and effect of age in different places and times in history; discusses the concept as put forth in novels, memoirs, and literary studies and criticism; and raises important existential and spiritual questions about the meaning of growing old.

The chapters in the second section demonstrate how interdisciplinary humanities can be applied to the study of aging through such thoughtful queries as: How do creativity and health relate in old age? What does "old" mean in an era of high-tech medicine, and what is our moral obligation to care for elderly persons? Why are friendships of special importance to older people?

Section three uses semiotics, cultural analysis, and ideological critiques to identify key social issues related to aging, including the concept of "home," ageism and discrimination, and our understanding of aging in the era of globalization. The text closes with Robert Kastenbaum's poignant reflection on his own considerations of meaning and mortality as he journeyed back to health following heart surgery.

This comprehensive guide works at the nexus of the humanities and health professions to provide the intellectual rationale, history, and a substantive overview of humanistic gerontology as it has emerged in the United States and Europe.