Mary Pipher, author of the bestselling and groundbreaking Reviving Ophelia, which charts the troubled passage of girls into adolescence, has nimbly covered yet another psychological passage: that into old age, which May Sarton called "a foreign country."

Pipher reveals that the greatest shame for today's elders--most of whom survived the Depression--is not being self-sufficient. The majority of them stoically prefer to keep their feelings to themselves, and this is why it's so difficult to convince older parents to accept or even discuss such issues as physical and mental health, finances, eldercare, or living wills. This directly conflicts with the openness of their children, who grew up in the era of "free love" and were influenced by society (and the advent of psychology in the 1950s and popularization of therapy) to talk frankly about emotions. While a boomer can easily talk with a friend about marriage difficulties or even surgery, an elder is likely to find admitting such "weaknesses" abhorrent.

Another Country includes excerpts of sessions with dozens of Pipher's psychology patients, interspersed with not-so-obvious advice for sensitively communicating with the elderly. Some interviews are grim: one woman hallucinated that rodents were running through her house; she was so desperate for company from her family, but too proud to ask them to stop by, that she invented her own visitors. But the breakthroughs in communication Pipher is able to accomplish, sometimes with the help of grandchildren as intermediaries, are startling and thoroughly encouraging. (For example, the animals the woman was imagining disappeared after she received company regularly.)

Pipher cared for her dying mother for a "horrid," guilt-filled year while this book was being written and says that she wanted "to help others in my situation feel less alone." She also aims to help each generation understand the other. In these goals she's succeeded brilliantly. Any adult struggling with issues with their parents, especially mortality, will find Another Country an indispensable source of suggestions and support. --Erica Jorgensen

From Publishers Weekly
Older men and women, as well as their children and grandchildren, will find this well-written and sensitive investigation of aging both enlightening and engrossing. Because the death of her mother was so traumatic, Pipher, a psychologist and the author of Reviving Ophelia, was motivated to study the aging process in order to promote meaningful connections between the generations and more cultural support for pursuing them. She provides a wealth of anecdotal information about the problems of growing older, drawing on interviews and her own therapeutic work with predominately middle-class white and black Midwestern Americans in their 70s, 80s and 90s, as well as their children. Pipher contends that a variety of cultural trends are responsible for there being so many isolated old people today: a movement away from communal to individualistic ideals; the generation gap between baby boomers and their aging parents; the lack of organized support for the care of the elderly. As she relates the stories of those she has met and counseled, Pipher describes strategies for dealing with illness, physical decline, the death of a husband or wife and the emotional problems that arise for both the elderly and their families. She emphasizes the importance of intergenerational contacts, the benefit of giving older people freedom to make their own choices and her resolute belief that families can fortify the honesty and love they share through involvement in a dying parent's final months. One of the strengths of this excellent study is that Pipher includes examples of troubled as well as rewarding marital and parent/child relationships. Agent, Susan Lee Cohen at Riverside Literary Agency. Author tour. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Through case studies of patients and acquaintances, psychologist Pipher examines the trials of aging in contemporary America--for all those involved. These miniature biographies, told with respect and empathy, reveal not only a complicated reality but diverse possibilities as we all age. Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
Blazing a trail into the emotional life of people who are growing old, the author hacks away at much of the debrisstereotypes, indifference, and fearthat separates younger generations from their elders, but doesn't always escape the grip of sentimentality. As doctors, economists, and sociologists struggle to plan for a doubling of the population aged over 65 years (due in a little more than a generation), bestselling psychologist Pipher (who tackled families with The Shelter of Each Other, 1996, and adolescent girls with the Reviving Ophelia, 1994) leads a personal expedition into the land of the aging. Addressing the sandwich generation now dealing with both growing children and aging parents, Pipher warns, ``Our solutions to the dilemmas of caring for our elders will be applied to our own lives . . . the more we love and respect our elders, the more we teach our children to love and respect us.'' She deplores the segregation of the old in retirement communities or nursing homes as widening the already yawning gap between what she calls the self-reflective post-psychology generation and their community-oriented parents. (It should be noted that this is a shaky dichotomy; the parents of younger boomers came of age post-Freud, among nuclear, not extended, families.) Close relationships and frequent contact among all generationstoddlers, adolescents, parents, grandparents, even great-grandparentswill enrich everyone's lives and reduce the stress that comes from residues of guilt and anger, Pipher preaches. Although other researchers would disagree, she suggests thinking of the more vulnerable elderly ``as victims of chronic Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder . . . ordinary healthy people for whom all hell has broken loose.'' Interviews, case histories, and personal anecdotes deepen the author's exploration of aging. Don't put the elderly on social ice floes is the plea here, accompanied by compassionate, if not always solidly grounded, insights into growing old that will benefit the elderly and their children alike. (First Serial to Time; Book-of-the-Month Club featured alternate; author tour) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Book Description
Mary Pipher's phenomenal New York Times bestseller-a book about us and our parents...

"[Pipher] ventures into communities and then returns to explain their truths and ways of being to the rest of us in clear, clean English. Totally accessible...[Another Country] is a compassionate...look at the disconnect between baby boomers and their aging parents or grandparents." -USAToday

There are more older people in America today than ever before. They are our parents and grandparents, our aunts and uncles and in-laws.They are living longer, but in a culture that has come to worship youth-a culture in which families have dispersed, communities have broken down, and older people are isolated. Meanwhile, adults in two-career families are struggling to divide their time among their kids, their jobs, and their aging parents-searching for the right words to talk about loneliness, forgetfulness, or selling the house.

Another Country is a field guide to this rough terrain for a generation of baby boomers who are finding themselves unprepared to care for those who have always cared for them. Psychologist and bestselling writer Mary Pipher maps out strategies that help bridge the gaps that separate us from our elders. And with her inimitable combination of respect and realism, she offers us new ways of supporting each other-new ways of sharing our time, our energy, and our love.

"In Another Country, [Pipher] observes that to grow old for many people in today's fragmented, age-phobic, age-segregated America is to inhabit a foreign country, isolated, disconnected and misunderstood."-New York Times

"Pipher explores how today's mobile, individualistic, media-drenched culture prevents so many dependent old people, and the relatives trying to do right by them, from getting what they need...her insights will help people of several generations."-The Washington Post

"[Pipher] wrote [Another Country] to help Boomers like herself better understand their parents and grandparents and to glimpse what might await them in their old age."-Chicago Tribune

"Mary Pipher urges baby boomers to stay in tune with their elderly parents' needs...With average life expectancy now in the mid-70s and 2 million Americans turning 65 each year-a number that will skyrocket as the baby boomer generation ages-the stakes are raised for families and societies alike."-People

"The author of Reviving Ophelia unflinchingly takes us into the heart of this largely uncharted territory."-Rocky Mountain News

"A field guide to old age, combining personal stories with social theory."-Boston Globe

"Dr. Pipher sees aging from a broader perspective. [She] emphasizes the need for the elderly to become elders-people who can help us find a deep structure for our communities-[and] she makes a persuasive case for roots."-Christian Science Monitor

"This is a book that thoughtful Boomers can embrace as their own...Another Country looks at issues like care-giving, death, generational relations and the resiliency many elders display in old age. It offers advice on improving our relationships with other generations and with understanding our own passing years."-St. Petersburg Times

"Rich in stories and full in details....For people wondering about their parents' or more poignantly, their own aging."-St. Louis Post-Dispatch

"[Mary Pipher] comes across as neither saint nor scold. [Another Country is] not a how-to book, but a how-to-think book."-Minnesota Star Tribune

About the Author
Mary Pipher, Ph.D., is an internationally noted psychologist and author. She lectures extensively and has become, through her books, a household name. Her two previous books, Reviving Ophelia and The Shelter of Each Other, were also New York Times bestsellers.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Mary Pipher's Reviving Ophelia, the phenomenal bestseller about the experiences of adolescent girls today, changed forever how we understand their world, and ours. Now, Mary Pipher turns to an equally troubled passage—the journey into old age. This is a book about our parents and grandparents, because they don't grow old in a vacuum. The process can be just as painful for us—daughters and sons, granddaughters and grandsons—as for them. The gradual turning of life's tide can take us by surprise, as we find ourselves unprepared to begin caring for those who have always cared for us. Writing from her experience as a therapist and from interviews with families and older people, Pipher offers us scenarios that bridge the generation gap. And in these poignant and hopeful stories of real children, adults, and elders we find the secrets to empathy. With her inimitable combination of respect and realism, Pipher gets inside the minds, hearts, and bodies of elder men and women. And we begin to understand fully that the landscape of age is truly that of another country. Today's world is vastly different from the one our parents grew up in. It's not the world in which helping aging parents meant stopping in at their house every day; in which children could learn about the richness of life from their grandparents; and in which grandparents and children were sustained and nourished by the unique bond between those on the opposite ends of a lifetime. We need new ways of supporting one another—new ways of sharing our time, our energy, and our love. In Another Country, Mary Pipher will show us how.

About the Author:

A clinical psychologist in private practice in Lincoln, Nebraska, Mary Pipher has been seeing families for over twenty years. She is also a visiting assistant professor at the University of Nebraska, and a commentator for Nebraska Public Radio. Dr. Pipher received her B.A. in Cultural Anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley in 1969, and her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Nebraska in 1977. As an anthropology major in college, Dr. Pipher became aware of the impact of culture on the psychology of individuals. She wrote her previous book, Reviving Ophelia (Grosset/ Putnam, 1994), to help parents understand the situation young teenage girls are facing in our country today. Reviving Ophelia immediately struck a chord, and Dr. Pipher began receiving speaking requests from all over the country.

Now, two years later, with Reviving Ophelia a #1 New York Times bestseller, remaining on the list for more than one year, Mary Pipher has become a national authority on family issues, speaking to groups of professional psychologists, educators, organizations of schools and college presidents across the country. Her articulate and energetic lectures create enthusiasm for her ideas in a way that unites rather than polarizes her audiences, and she has become dedicated to reaching the largest possible audience with her important message.

Dr. Pipher is also the author of Hunger Pains: The American Women's Tragic Quest for Thinness (1988). She writes short fiction which has won numerous awards including the Alice P. Carter Award and recognition in the National Feminist Writer's competition. In the words of Mary Pipher, "I love my life as a writer. Writing has been the great gift of my middle years. It's a tender mercy, a reason to wake up every morning."

A plainspoken woman who retains her simplicity, Mary Pipher has seen her daily life change, but she has not changed. She lives in Lincoln, Nebraska.

SYNOPSIS

March 1999

Reviving Ophelia changed the way we think about adolescent girls. Now its author, renowned psychiatrist Mary Pipher, has journeyed to the emotional terrain of our elders. She has returned to explain -- to baby boomers and everyone else -- what our elders are going through, why we have trouble dealing with them, and how to set about making old age a more pleasant time, for them and, eventually, for ourselves.

FROM THE CRITICS

Chicago Tribune

Pipher wrote Another Country to help Boomers like herself better understand their parents and grandparents and to glimpse what might await them in their old age.

People

Mary Pipher urges baby boomers to stay in tune with their elderly parents' needs...With average life expectancy now in the mid-70s and 2 million Americans turning 65 each year-a number that will skyrocket as the baby boomer generation ages-the stakes are raised for families and societies alike.

St. Petersburg Times

This is a book that thoughtful Boomers can embrace as their own...Another Country looks at issues like care-giving, death, generational relations and the resiliency many elders display in old age. It offers advice on improving our relationships with other generations and with understanding our own passing years.

Rocky Mountain News

The author of Reviving Ophelia unflinchingly takes us into the heart of this largely uncharted territory.

The Washington Post