The Third Chapter, Sara LawrenceLightfoot
The Third Chapter, Sara LawrenceLightfoot
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The Third Chapter
Passion, Risk, and Adventure in the 25 Years After 50

Author: Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot

Narrator: Laural Merlington

Unabridged: 8 hr 2 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 02/09/2009


Synopsis

In the twenty-first century, a developmental phase of life is emerging as significant and distinct, capturing our interest, engaging our curiosity, and expanding our understanding of human potential and development. Demographers talk about this new chapter in life as characterized by people—those between ages fifty and seventy-five—who are considered "neither young nor old." In our "third chapters" we are beginning to redefine our views about the casualties and opportunities of aging; we are challenging cultural definitions of strength, maturity, power, and sexiness.

This is a chapter in life when the traditional norms, rules, and rituals of our careers seem less encompassing and restrictive; when many women and men seem to be embracing new challenges and searching for greater meaning in life.

In The Third Chapter, Dr. Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot offers a strong counterpoint to the murky ambivalence that shrouds our clear view of people in their third chapters. She challenges the still-prevailing and anachronistic images of aging by documenting and revealing the ways in which the years between fifty and seventy-five may, in fact, be the most transformative and generative time in our lives—tracing the ways in which wisdom, experience, and new learning inspire individual growth and cultural transformation. The women and men whose voices fill the pages of The Third Chapter tell passionate and poignant stories of risk and vulnerability, failure and resilience, challenge and mastery, experimentation and improvisation, and insight and new learning.

About Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot

Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot is the Emily Hargroves Fisher Professor of Education in the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University. A sociologist specializing in the culture of schools, socialization within families and communities, and the relationships between culture and learning styles, she is the author of eight books, including I've Known Rivers, The Art and Science of Portraiture, and The Essential Conversation: What Parents and Teachers Can Learn from Each Other.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Ann on March 06, 2021

A useful guide to embracing the opportunity to continue to learn and grow as you age. It's also about challenging previous assumptions and mastering new ways of knowing: "We begin to understand that we need to undo many of the practices and presumptions that made us achievers in the past; we need to......more

Goodreads review by Jon on April 11, 2010

If I’m going through it, I want to read up on it. The Third Chapter is about what people do with their lives between the ages of fifty and seventy-five. I’ve read similar books, such as Gail Sheehy’s Passages Predictable Crises of Adult Life and Understanding Men’s Passages Discovering the New Map o......more

Goodreads review by Tim on August 03, 2009

Lawrence-Lighfoot's THE THIRD CHAPTER is a qualitiative sociological study of what we boomers are facing as we enter the ages of 50-75. She has interviewed 40 upper middle class, highly comfortable, and privileged men and women, and her insights are quite solid and encouraging to those of us who wis......more

Goodreads review by Ensiform on April 29, 2013

The author, a professor of sociology at Harvard, uses forty detailed oral case studies of people – all educated, successful, and financially secure – between the ages 50 and 75 to delineate the new ways of learning such people develop. She argues that people in this age range (which she calls the “T......more

Goodreads review by Patty on September 03, 2014

Over the years I have read several books by Lawrence-Lightfoot. Her writing always challenges me since she sees the world from a very different place than I do. I am grateful to all I have learned from this wonderful author/researcher. The Third Chapter is the book I was looking for, but I had no ide......more