Nasty, Brutish, and Long
Adventures in Eldercare
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Read Ira Rosofsky's posts on the Penguin Blog
A candid, humane, and improbably humorous look at the world of eldercare
In nursing homes across the country, members of the Greatest Generation are living out their last days. Life is a succession of pokes and prods, medications, TV, bingo, and, possibly, talking to Ira Rosofsky. With a compassionate eye but mordant wit, Rosofsky, a psychologist charged with gauging the mental health of his elders, reveals a culture based not in the empathy of caretaking, but rather in the coolly detached bureaucracy of Medicare and Medicaid.
A portrayal of what is increasingly becoming the last slice of life for many, Nasty, Brutish, and Long is also a baby boomer's poignant meditation on mortality, a reflection on his caregiving for his parents' final days, and an examination of the choices that we, as a society, have made about health care for the elderly who are no longer of sound mind and body.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A psychologist who has worked for years in nursing homes and assisted-living facilities, Rosofsky presents a disturbing, often moving account of the lives of some of the two million men and women who reside in America's 18,000 nursing homes. Like the police officer or bartender whose perspective on society is shaped by his work, Rosofsky, who professionally sees only problematic residents of institutions, has a slightly skewed (and very grim) sample. However, the dispiriting tenor of the title and the emphasis on confused and depressed men and women are leavened with the author's bursts of wit, his welcome guidance on how to evaluate nursing homes and assisted-living centers and his frank ruminations on his own aging and health issues and the deaths of his parents and mother-in-law. What could have been a morose account of loss, suffering and death is lightened by the humorous and helpful treatment of an emotionally laden topic.
