Like so many children, Lucy wants a dog. But, unlike other children, Lucy interviews animals to fill the pet vacancy. And she gets a little more than she expected. Endearing and heart-warming, this story shows (with a humour that never overshadows the message) that being different is good. Another classic from this husband-and-wife team, told with simplicity and portrayed through appealing characters, illustrated with style and confidence.

Uniquely bridging a gap in the gerontology literature between the biological and psychosocial aspects of aging, the second edition of this interdisciplinary text provides key updates on an abundance of cutting edge research, expands information on diversity issues in aging, and examines in greater depth the physiology of aging, theories of biological aging, and methodological issues. Instructors will also welcome the addition of an Instructor's Manual and PowerPoint slides. Written for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students, and invigorated by the addition of new coauthors, the text integrates findings in biology, psychology, and the social sciences to provide comprehensive, multidisciplinary coverage of the aging process. Included is key information on age-related changes and disease-related processes, the demography of the aging population worldwide, aging theories, and how to promote optimal aging. From a psychosocial perspective, the book examines mental health, stress and coping, spirituality, and caregiving in later years. Also included is crucial information on longitudinal design and statistics as they relate to aging research, promising new trends in gerotechnology, Green Houses, and information on health promotion programs. Real life examples throughout the text help students to understand practical applications of the material. New to the Third Edition: Abundant new cutting-edge research Expands information on diversity issues Updated theories of biological aging: microRNA, proteasomes, and gut microsomes Psychology of aging: how variability in responses to stress affect health and mortality, Blue Zones Aging and public policy: How the recent recession has affected poverty rates resulting in increases in mortality among poor, middle-aged whites Gerontechnology: The "internet of things," assistive devices, and the potential of robots Includes the research of new authors Instructor's Manual and PowerPoint slides Key Features: Integrates cutting-edge information on biological and psychosocial aspects of aging Examines age-related changes, disease-related processes, aging theories, and how to promote optimal aging Encompasses mental health, stress and coping, spirituality, and caregiving in later years Provides information on aging-related longitudinal design and statistics Covers promising new trends such as gerontechnology and Green Houses

Hercules and the King of Portugal investigates how representations of masculinity figure in the fashioning of Spanish national identity, scrutinizing ways that gender performances of two early modern male icons-Hercules and King Sebastian-are structured to express enduring nationhood. The classical hero Hercules features prominently in Hispanic foundational fictions and became intimately associated with the Hapsburg monarchy in the early sixteenth century. King Sebastian of Portugal (1554-78), both during his lifetime and after his violent death, has been inserted into his own land's charter myth, even as competing interests have adapted his narratives to promote Spanish power. The hybrid oral and written genre of poetic Spanish theater, as purveyor and shaper of myth, was well situated to stage and resolve dilemmas relating both to lineage determined by birth and performance of masculinity, in ways that would ideally uphold hierarchy. Dian Fox's ideological analysis exposes how the two icons are subject to political manipulations in seventeenth-century Spanish theater and other media. Fox finds that officially sanctioned and sometimes popularly produced narratives are undercut by dynamic social and gendered processes: "Hercules" and "Sebastian" slip outside normative discourses and spaces to enact nonnormative behaviors and unreproductive masculinities.

One of the most intellectually and emotionally engaging of the Spanish Golden Age (seventeenth century) plays, as well as the most controversial. Taking place during the reign of King Pedro of Castile (1350-1369), it is one of the spectacular 'honour dramas', in which the main characters confront compelling yet conflicting imperatives. The Physician of His Honour is beautiful in its poetry and unsettling in its resolution. For more than 350 years the play and its author have been as fiercely reviled as they have been enthusiastically acclaimed by audiences and readers. First published in 1997, for the second edition the translation has been extensively revised, with the aim of simplifying the English, whilst continuing to respect and acknowledge as much as possible the beauties and challenges of the original Spanish.

Refiguring the Hero reassesses the social significance of several of the most widely read plays of Spain's Golden Age in light of then-contempory ideas about heroism.

The Spanish dramatists Lope de Vega and Pedro Calderon de la Barca, near contemporaries of Shakespeare, are hailed by Hispanists as democrats at heart for making heroes, in both the literary and the positive moral sense, of peasants. Spanish drama is alleged to be the first literature in the Western world to find the common man worthy of heroic status. Refiguring the Hero reevaluates the place of the canon of Spanish Golden Age drama within its European context.

The book discusses European literary heroism through the seventeenth century, with particular attention to the Spanish or moral enlightenment were essential characteristics of a hero. However, the protagonists of Spanish "peasant honor" plays do not fit into this heroic tradition. The peasant often murders a nobleman who has offended his honor, and is rewarded by the reigning monarch. The peasants gain official approval by misrepresenting the events leading up to the murders. The generous kings, in their turn, are historical figures known for their failures.

While most scholars approaching Spanish Golden Age drama regard these plays a s socially subversive or revolutionary, Dian Fox contends that they are consistent with other contemporary European national dramas in reserving heroism in serious works for socially superior characters. She challenges the "democratic" view of the peasant triumphing over the nobleman as heroic and shows that political and social developments since the seventeenth century have enhanced the sympathy with which modern readers regard the violent acts of the peasants in these plays.