Customer Reviews

Aging with Grace: What the Nun Study Teaches Us About Leading Longer, Healthier, and More Meaningful Lives

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I ordered two copies of Aging with Grace and I am still waiting for one copy to arrive, so I will decline from making any comments until I have received the second copy.

Ever since my father's diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease, I've worried about the little things I forget. Never mind that I've always been a little absentminded, I fretted about whether I received the dreaded APOE-4 gene in the genetic package he bequeathed me. But this book gave me hope - lots of it! It shows clearly that the symptoms of Alzheimer's are not merely a result of your genes but also of how you've lived your life. Reading about the nun who, in spite of a brain riddled with tangles and plaques, like the Energizer Bunny, kept on going and going, gave me plenty to hope for.

Caring, kindness, love, service - all are integral to the community of nuns. Theirs is a joyful story and a fascinating read. Don't miss it. Six Stars!

David Snowdon's Aging with Grace is the first book on a clinical topic I have been unable to put down. It quickly became one of those books you find every opportunity you can to read on (the "Oh, I can read it while I'm eating my oatmeal" almost made me late to work).

The book has the feel of memoir - as we learn the stories of the Sisters involved. However, there is also deep clinical value. Snowdon (and the women who generously become subjects) has made a major contribution to the field of Alzheimer's reasearch with this study. The conclusions should intrigue professionals. The writing is accessible enough that non-professionals can also draw a lot from it.

I would recommend this highly to both colleagues and family members and individuals affected by Alzheimers. I would also recommend it to anyone who is interested in monastic life. Sort of an Olver Sacks (Awakenings) meets Kathleen Norris (The Cloister Walk) - with beautiful results.

A good friend of mine lent this book to me. Although I do not have a family member who has dementia, I thought this book was well written, that the stories were compellingly told, and all in all, it was a fascinating read!

The story of the nun study will hit home to scores of millions of Americans, for most of us have aging parents or grandparents, or we have reached advanced years ourselves. Snowdon tells the story of his research into Alzheimer's and related illnesses with both clarity and compassion. He tells their story both personal and biological. In these pages, many of us will read our own futures.

In "Aging with Grace," Snowdon walks the lay-reader through the steps and stages that made his now-famous "nun study" possible. You may have caught bits of this study in Time Magazine, The Donohue Show, or many other popular media. This is the story behind the story. It is the story of the nuns themselves. Snowdon uses the nun's own words to describe where they came from, what they aspired to as young initiates, and where they are going as they move on into their advanced years.

The book isn't all drama. Snowdon provides useful background on Alzheimer's disease, its symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment. He goes on to draw both firm and tentative conclusions. In short, he sprinkles in advice based on sound, careful, peer-reviewed, scientific research. You'll learn what parents can do for their children, what children can do for their aging parents, and what various factors may contribute to or exacerbate senile dementia.

Lastly, this book stands in sharp contrast to the fraud so frequently perpetuated on a desperate and uninformed public by various "alternative" medical practices. Snowdon's work provides an excellent example of how medical research is done. I've been very comfortable sharing this book with friends who desperately need reliable information in a forthright yet compassionate form, and they have assured me that my recommendation really helped fill a need and made them feel less helpless.

I found this book soberly informative, compassionate, personal, and spiritual - a rare combination in any reliable medical book. I encourage all medical researches to hold this book up as their model for successfully communicating with a non-medical audience. ~Robert

I have read over the customer reviews, and agree with those who find this account of the "Nun Study" inspirational, uplifting and wonderful to read. Although the information about Alzheimer's is the reason the study got so much publicity, I think there's another reason for why the book is so powerful: reading about these elderly nuns is a visit to a way of life and an era of women's religion which is now slipping away. With the deaths of these participants and women like them, it will be gone forever. This group is almost the last generation of nuns for whom becoming and remaining a nun was a popular option for idealistic young women. There are no younger cohorts of nuns to take the places of these marvelous elderly ladies; perhaps one reason so many of the latter kept very active up through their 80s and even 90s is because there were few replacements for them in religious orders. To celebrate their lives before they die seems to be an underlying theme of the book, quite apart from the medical information about aging.

Snowdon stands well on the shoulders of others, and he effects a delightful presentation of their findings. It's a terrible shame that he cannot connect to the women on a more respectable intellectual level. This inhibition prevents a more "graceful" presentation of the study's findings.

This is an excellent, exciting book to read on the realities and humanistic elements to conducting a research study. It is a must read for anyone interested in preventing Alzheimer's or who teaches issues in gerontology. It is a composite of the research related to Alzheimer's refuting or confirming the evidence through the author's own research. The only shortcoming is it is not referenced. I couldn't put it down because of the style and content of the information.

A book about very old Catholic nuns and their experiences with the dementia of Alzheimers disease--now THAT sounds like a downer, wouldn't you say? Which goes to show once again that we can't judge a book by its, well, by its subject matter alone. AGING WITH GRACE is distinctly UPBEAT, indeed inspiring: I read it from cover to cover in about a day and a half because I couldn't put it down for long.

David Snowden designed and now directs the research project which focuses on an order of Catholic nuns, The School Sisters of Notre Dame. The purpose of the research is to find answers to the maddening mysteries of Alzheimers disease, the sword of Damocles that hangs over so many of us, whether we talk about it or not. But who knew that a shy epidemiologist could WRITE so well?

Snowden gives us quite a load of fairly detailed information in the course of his book, but he sandwiches that in between such warm and charming portraits and anecdotes of his research subjects that we are willing to sit still for the science. We get to know a dozen or so of the sisters, from 85 years old to 106, and through them, come to understand a little more of the challenge of this dreaded disease. For example, can someone have fairly advanced Alzheimers yet appear free of dementia? Can the brief written autobiography of a teen-aged girl foretell Alzheimers sixty years later? David Snowden's keen mind and painstaking research may unlock crucial mysteries; but it is his warm heart and delightful, grace-filled subjects that make this book a must read.

I eagerly looked forward to find out the causes of dementia, like the Alzheimer's disease, and the idea to study a homogeneous group - nuns - for scientific reasons appealed to me. Now as I have read the book I certainly know a lot more about the factors behind the Alzheimer's disease and how we can delay, decrease (or eliminate) its symptoms or perhaps even prevent it. It sounds great - then why did I only give it 4 stars?! - Because to get to the 'real stuff' you have to wade through lengthy biographies of the nuns. It's obvious that the author got close to them and learned to like them and perhaps _you_ will enjoy to read about their life stories. I, on the other hand, would have appreciated to get more of a fact - or reference - book, at least half the size of it (counting the number of pages). On the last pages of the book there are a link to their website ... with further links from there. On these web pages I found most - if not all - relevant information about this subject in a condensed form. Of course the author gives a more detailed explanation regarding his findings and conclusions in the book, than the website does...