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Title: Aging With Grace : What the Nun Study Teaches Us About Leading Longer, Healthier, and MoreMeaningful Lives by David Snowdon ISBN: 0-553-38092-3 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 30 April, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (14 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A "nun-angle" on the nun study
Comment: I have read over the customer reviews, and agree with those who find this account of the "Nun Study" inspirational, uplifting and wonderful to read. Although the information about Alzheimer's is the reason the study got so much publicity, I think there's another reason for why the book is so powerful: reading about these elderly nuns is a visit to a way of life and an era of women's religion which is now slipping away. With the deaths of these participants and women like them, it will be gone forever. This group is almost the last generation of nuns for whom becoming and remaining a nun was a popular option for idealistic young women. There are no younger cohorts of nuns to take the places of these marvelous elderly ladies; perhaps one reason so many of the latter kept very active up through their 80s and even 90s is because there were few replacements for them in religious orders. To celebrate their lives before they die seems to be an underlying theme of the book, quite apart from the medical information about aging.
Rating: 5
Summary: AN UPBEAT SURPRISE
Comment: A book about very old Catholic nuns and their experiences with the dementia of Alzheimers disease--now THAT sounds like a downer, wouldn't you say? Which goes to show once again that we can't judge a book by its, well, by its subject matter alone. AGING WITH GRACE is distinctly UPBEAT, indeed inspiring: I read it from cover to cover in about a day and a half because I couldn't put it down for long.
David Snowden designed and now directs the research project which focuses on an order of Catholic nuns, The School Sisters of Notre Dame. The purpose of the research is to find answers to the maddening mysteries of Alzheimers disease, the sword of Damocles that hangs over so many of us, whether we talk about it or not. But who knew that a shy epidemiologist could WRITE so well?
Snowden gives us quite a load of fairly detailed information in the course of his book, but he sandwiches that in between such warm and charming portraits and anecdotes of his research subjects that we are willing to sit still for the science. We get to know a dozen or so of the sisters, from 85 years old to 106, and through them, come to understand a little more of the challenge of this dreaded disease. For example, can someone have fairly advanced Alzheimers yet appear free of dementia? Can the brief written autobiography of a teen-aged girl foretell Alzheimers sixty years later? David Snowden's keen mind and painstaking research may unlock crucial mysteries; but it is his warm heart and delightful, grace-filled subjects that make this book a must read.
Rating: 5
Summary: Both Accessible and Profound
Comment: David Snowdon's Aging with Grace is the first book on a clinical topic I have been unable to put down. It quickly became one of those books you find every opportunity you can to read on (the "Oh, I can read it while I'm eating my oatmeal" almost made me late to work).
The book has the feel of memoir - as we learn the stories of the Sisters involved. However, there is also deep clinical value. Snowdon (and the women who generously become subjects) has made a major contribution to the field of Alzheimer's reasearch with this study. The conclusions should intrigue professionals. The writing is accessible enough that non-professionals can also draw a lot from it.
I would recommend this highly to both colleagues and family members and individuals affected by Alzheimers. I would also recommend it to anyone who is interested in monastic life. Sort of an Olver Sacks (Awakenings) meets Kathleen Norris (The Cloister Walk) - with beautiful results.
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