Books

Literary scholar Ruth O. Saxton reads across thirty works of fiction — from Barbara Pym and Doris Lessing to May Sarton, Margaret Drabble, and Jenny Diski — to ask how novelists imagine women in the last decades of life. She traces the difference between the diminished old lady of cultural stereotype and the vivid, still-becoming women some writers dare to portray. A perceptive, companionable guide to finding yourself on the page at any age.

A faith-based guide for adult children — most often daughters — caring for aging parents. Drawing on her own experience, Jane Daly offers practical help with the hard decisions and the harder moments, woven together with Christian encouragement about grace, forgiveness, and finding peace through the caregiving season.

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.

A former state senator and late-blooming ballroom dancer makes the case for staying vibrant through partner dance — including for those living with dementia or Parkinson’s.

Why it’s here: A resource rather than a memoir: practical, later-life inspiration for keeping body and spirit moving in the second half of life.

Neuropsychiatrist Louann Brizendine’s accessible guide to the female brain across the lifespan — including the profound neurological changes that occur in perimenopause and menopause, and how they shape emotion, memory, and behavior.

In this landmark work, Betty Friedan — author of The Feminine Mystique — turns her attention to what she calls the “age mystique”: the cultural insistence that growing older is only decline. Drawing on years of research and hundreds of interviews, she argues that the later decades can be a period of continued growth, purpose, and new freedom rather than a slow fade. Friedan dismantles stereotypes about work, sexuality, and care in old age, insisting that vitality after sixty is not the exception but the possibility. A foundational text for anyone rethinking what age can mean.

Benedictine sister Joan Chittister reflects on the gifts that can only come with age — perspective, depth, freedom from approval, the ability to love without condition. A quietly radical and deeply comforting meditation on growing older.

After feminist poet Marge Piercy suffers a medical emergency in 2022 and is revived, she spends the following year taking stock. Written at ninety in the Japanese zuihitsu form, this luminous journal braids diary, recipes, garden notes, and poetry into a celebration of a life in its ‘resurrected’ old age.

After her mother’s funeral, a widow returns to her mother’s Minnesota hometown and is drawn into an Ojibway family’s two-century dispossession from their land — confronting her own inherited history. A late-life memoir of loss and reckoning.

A psychotherapist’s memoir of a long, bruising divorce and custody battle with a wealthy ex — a high-stakes fight that surfaces old wounds and, ultimately, a path to healing.

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

Dr. Jen Gunter cuts through menopause misinformation with science, humor, and feminist fire. Tackles HRT, bone health, cardiovascular risk, and medical neglect of menopausal women.

Dr. Mary Claire Haver delivers a comprehensive, evidence-based guide to perimenopause and menopause — hormones, nutrition, sleep, strength training, and mental health.

At 72, the widow Mary Delany picked up a pair of scissors and a piece of black paper and invented an entirely new art form — the paper mosaic. Molly Peacock’s biography of this forgotten Georgian genius is also a meditation on late-life creativity: what becomes possible when the social obligations of a lifetime finally lift.

Donna Henes proposes to expand the traditional pagan stages of a woman’s life (Maiden, Mother, Crone) to a four-stage schema, like the seasons of the year, and celebrates the third, Queen, phase of her life in this inspiring book.

Dr. Ogden was a professional who wrote with wisdom and compassion about how women reclaim their sexuality after midlife, in spite of social pressures, and in many cases in spite of a history of abuse. She has spent a lifetime developing her understanding of how we construct meaning about our sexuality and how we develop our sexual relationships. Readers of this book gain the benefit of her insights. Our relationships with ourselves are her ultimate concern.

Intimacy coach Nathalie Dewalhens names a new archetype — the Sensual Crone — for the woman whose desire didn’t vanish at menopause but grew weirder, wilder, and more interesting. Finished on her sixtieth birthday, this frank, unsugarcoated set of five truths runs from vaginal atrophy to neo-tantra to a hotel room in Bruges, insisting that erotic life after reproduction is a beginning, not an epilogue.

Recovering from divorce, an executive coach accepts an invitation to Ecuador and meets a sixth-generation shaman; their relationship spans two continents and eight years, leading her through a mystical late-life reinvention.

Sociologist Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot interviewed dozens of people in their 50s, 60s, and 70s who were reinventing their lives — changing careers, discovering new passions, taking risks they’d deferred for decades. This book makes the case that the years between 50 and 75 are not a coda but a genuinely new chapter, full of possibility.

Joan Price is the foremost advocate for older people’s sexuality, and this is her definitive guide — covering everything from the physiological changes of menopause to navigating desire after illness, disability, or divorce. Frank, warm, and non-judgmental, it treats older women’s sexual lives with the seriousness they deserve.

Suze Orman’s complete guide to retirement planning for those in the critical pre-retirement decade. Covers Social Security, Medicare, 401(k) strategies, and how to make your money last as long as you do.

Neuropsychiatrist Louann Brizendine reframes menopause as a neurological upgrade — arguing that the female brain actually improves in focus, decision-making, and emotional regulation after the transition. A profoundly optimistic perspective grounded in neuroscience.

Dr. Jen Gunter’s comprehensive, myth-busting guide to vaginal and vulvar health — including the massive changes menopause brings to genital tissue. Essential reading for any woman who wants accurate, evidence-based information about her body.

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.