Books

Research professor Brené Brown’s guide to courageous leadership — vulnerability, trust, difficult conversations, and clarity of values. Powerful for women at any stage of their careers or community involvement, including those taking on leadership roles in midlife.

Gail Sheehy, author of the landmark Passages, tells her own story: coming of age in postwar America, building a journalism career, navigating love and loss, and arriving at the second half of life with the same fierce curiosity she brought to her decades of reporting on how Americans grow and change.

Geriatrician Louise Aronson spent 25 years caring for older patients before writing this Pulitzer finalist — part memoir, part manifesto — arguing that America’s medical system is failing its elders and that old age deserves to be treated as a distinct, valuable stage of human life, not a problem to be managed.

A powerful corrective to decades of fear around hormone therapy. Presents the science showing estrogen is safe and beneficial for most women. Essential before any HRT decision.

Media scholar Susan J. Douglas examines how women who came of age in the 1960s and ‘70s are now rewriting the script for older womanhood — rejecting the invisibility and passivity assigned to them by culture while honestly confronting the realities of aging. A sociological portrait of a generation refusing to go quietly.

Dr. Stacy Sims applies her female physiology expertise specifically to the menopausal transition, with training and nutrition protocols designed to maintain strength, power, and athletic performance through and beyond menopause.

Gail Collins surveys three centuries of American history to show that older women have always been more influential, more inventive, and more powerful than the culture acknowledges. From colonial grandmothers to suffragists to modern activists, No Stopping Us Now recovers a hidden history of elder women who refused to step aside.

Essays on creativity, beauty, purpose, and power for women after sixty. Featuring profiles of trailblazing women and questions for reflection, Rock On invites readers to reignite their creative spark, advocate for better healthcare, make confident money choices, and live out loud.

The classic 12-week program for recovering your creative self. Particularly powerful for women in midlife who have spent decades putting others first and are ready to reclaim — or discover for the first time — their creative lives.

Sonya Renee Taylor’s powerful call for radical self-love challenges us to examine how body shame and sizeism shape our lives — and offers a framework for rejecting these systems. Particularly valuable for women navigating body changes in midlife.

Barbara Walker reclaims the ‘crone’ archetype from its derogatory associations, presenting the post-menopausal woman as a being of power, wisdom, and spiritual authority in pre-patriarchal traditions. A foundational feminist text on aging.

Neuroscientist Lisa Mosconi reveals how menopause reshapes the brain and what women can do to protect their cognitive health. Groundbreaking and empowering.

Dr. Christiane Northrup treats menopause as a powerful life transition, not a medical problem. Drawing on medicine, psychology, and holistic healing, she guides women through the physical and emotional landscape of the change.

Neuroscientist Dr. Sarah McKay traces the female brain across the whole span of a woman’s life — from girlhood and the menstrual cycle through pregnancy, menopause, and old age — showing how hormones, experience, and biology shape the mind at every stage. For readers over 50, the later chapters on menopause and healthy brain aging are especially resonant, set in the fuller context of a lifetime.

Suze Orman addresses the financial challenges unique to women — pay gaps, caregiving breaks, longer lifespans — with a concrete action plan for retirement, savings, and financial independence.