Product Description: Figuring Age engages the virtually invisible subject of older women in western culture. Like other markers of social difference, age is given meaning by a culture. Yet unlike gender and race, the subjects of age and aging have received little sustained attention...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: In his essay on "Old Age," Emerson wrote that "there is a proportion between the designs of a man and the length of his life: there is a calendar of his years, so of his performance." In advancing this optimistic theory, Emerson suggests that there is a deep and fundamental relationship between creation and the span of a person's life, and that fostering creativity over the arc of a long life is essential to cultural as well as to personal health...read more