As 77 million baby boomers begin turning fifty, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, a respected social critic and award-winning writer, tells the truth about that uncharted period when time speeds up and the body slows down - when you are no longer young but far from old, and you refuse to believe that you are over the hill. Pogrebin's journey out of her forties and into her fifties becomes a user-friendly map of this challenging terrain as she demystifies the fears most people can't face and celebrates the possibilities most people can't see. Every woman who is facing fifty or has already moved past it...

Everyone knows someone who's sick or suffering. Yet when a friend or relative is under duress many of us feel uncertain about how to cope.

Throughout her recent bout with breast cancer, Letty Cottin Pogrebin became fascinated by her friends' and family's diverse reactions to her and her illness: how awkwardly some of them behaved; how some misspoke or misinterpreted her needs; and how wonderful it was when people read her right. She began talking to her fellow patients and dozens of other veterans of serious illness, seeking to discover what sick people wished their friends knew about how...