The Silent Passage: Revised and Updated Edition [Mass Market Paperback]

How are women of the baby-boomer generation handling the "M word," the change whose name they dare not speak? According to Sheehy's short report (expanded from her 1991 Vanity Fair article), many are utterly unprepared. The author ( Pathfinder ), who has been negotiating this passage herself, talks to doctors, nutritionists and a cross-section of women, examining both her own vacillation over estrogen replacement therapy and the more general questions of its side effects. We also hear from women who, having started families late in life, are catapulted from first babies to first hot flashes , and from such celebrities as Candice Bergen and Lesley Ann Warren. There are many frenetic and some encouraging menopause war stories here, but few accounts from women who experienced little difficulty during these years. Sheehy includes discussion of herbal remedies, exercise and dietary defenses against osteoporosis. While remaining somewhat inconclusive, her review of this stage of life for women in anti-aging America is detailed and sympathetic.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

When Sheehy, author of the classic Passages ( LJ 5/15/76) and The Man Who Changed the World: The Lives of Mikhail S. Gorbachev ( LJ 12/90), wrote about her personal experience with menopause in the October 1991 issue of Vanity Fair , the response from readers was overwhelming and compelled her to expand the article into this surprisingly slim book. Interviewing over 100 women in various stages of menopause and 75 experts, she examines the medical, psychological, and social aspects of this "silent passage." A biological change that spans five to seven years, this "second adulthood," according to Sheehy, has three stages: perimenopause, menopause, and coalescence. While Sheehy performs a valuable service in bringing this topic out into the open, her book is weakened by her cliched Cosmopolitan -style prose and New Age psychobabble. Still, with the older members of the Baby Boom generation entering menopause, there will be demand for this book. Readers seeking practical advice should consult Winnifred Cutler and Celso-Ramon Garcia's Menopause ( LJ 11/1/91). Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 12/91.
- Wilda Williams, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

A compelling discussion about menopause, packed with facts and anecdotes that are right on target for the baby-boom women about to encounter change of life. This short volume is an outgrowth of an article that Sheehy wrote for Vanity Fair when she began to experience menopausal symptoms. The response from readers was immediate, clearly confirming that the article had cracked ``the last taboo.'' To rephrase an old saw, nobody wants to talk about menopause, but everybody wants to do something about it. Laid out eloquently here are the facts, the folklore, and the fears, revealed by interviews with scientists, medical professionals, and dozens of women. Many of the women were frightened by the idea that, as menopause neared, they would begin to ``lose it upstairs.'' But the symptoms that accompany menopause make ``losing it'' almost appealing. They include: depression, headaches, itchy skin, mood swings, hot flashes, reduced sex drive, fatigue, irritability, osteoporosis, sleep deprivation, memory loss--and more. Not all symptoms afflict all women--some have none--and, most comforting, the symptoms are almost always temporary or easily treatable. Sheehy takes on the medical establishment, calling the lack of data about hormone therapy a ``scandal,'' placing current knowledge about change of life on the level of ``leeches and roots and shamans.'' But she also sees the stages of menopause as the gateway to a new life, in which revived energy and earned wisdom can be harnessed to the community. Many of the interviews are moving, and some are funny; but there is a disproportionate emphasis on the experiences of upper-income women who can afford bone-density analysis and hormone-replacement therapy. It's reported that there are 43 million American women in or past menopause, with another half million to join them each year in the 90's. Sheehy's book will be a bible for them--and hopefully for the doctors who treat them. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Gail Sheehy's landmark bestseller has become the bible for women concerned about menopause. Since The Silent Passage was originally published in the early 1990s, Gail Sheehy, a member of the board of the New York Menopause Research Foundation, has been at the forefront of the newest research on menopause. She has also continued to interview countless women throughout the country on the subject. In this updated and expanded edition, she presents essential new data in chapters on The Perimenopause Panic, Menopause in the Workplace, Estrogen and Brainpower, and New Frontiers in Treatment. Candid, enlightening, inspiring, and witty, with the latest information on everything from early menopause to Chinese medicine and natural remedies, The Silent Passage is an indispensable reference for every woman.

Gail Sheehy, the author of eleven hooks including her most recent work, New Passages: Mapping Your Life Across Time, is best known for her landmark work, Passages, named in a 1991 Library of Congress survey among the top ten books that have most influenced people's lives.

One of the original contributors to New York magazine, Ms. Sheehy is also a political journalist and contributing editor to Vanity Fair. She is the mother of two daughters and divides her time between New York City and Berkeley, California, where she lives with her husband, Clay Felker, who teaches at the University of California, Berkeley, school of journalism. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Gail Sheehy's latest book breaks the "silence" surrounding menopause, the "passage" in a woman's life which is not widely discussed or completely understood. Mixing up-to-date facts and current medical studies with personal stories and interviews of women, both well-known and unknown, this audiobook provides an examination of menopause's range of symptoms and treatments. Gail Sheehy's narration matches this mix of factual and anecdotal information. Her voice moves from a steady, level and clear recitation to a more rapid, conversational and enthusiastic expression. This change in tempo keeps the listener both absorbed and informed. A.A.B. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.