About the Author

Beth Baker, a long-time freelance writer whose work has appeared in the Washington Post, AARP Bulletin, Washingtonian and Ms. Magazine, is the features editor of BioScience, the journal of the American Institute of Biological Sciences. Baker is the author of Old Age in a New Age: The Promise of Transformative Nursing Home, also published by Vanderbilt University Press. She and her husband live in a close-knit community in Takoma Park, Maryland.

Reviews

"With a Little Help from Our Friends is a thoughtful and clear-eyed look at the opportunities and challenges of aging in community. Every Baby Boomer who wants to 'age in place' should read this book. So should their children."
--Howard Gleckman, author of Caring for Our Parents, Resident Fellow, the Urban Institute

"With a Little Help from Our Friends is timely and instructive. By weaving together stories about nine ways to think about community building, Beth Baker helps Boomers imagine alternatives as they prepare for living arrangements more permanent than Woodstock and less scary than where their (grand)parents ended up."
--W. Andrew Achenbaum, Deputy Director of the Consortium on Aging at the University of Texas Medical School

"[Baker] provides a well-informed, thoughtful, intelligent, and insightful analysis of why all of us should not be afraid to look forward into our future and make critical decisions now about how we wish to live our lives in old age. [...] She has done a masterful job of telling stories that have integrated her relationship with her interviewees into the larger picture of how and why housing systems and facilities for older adults are constructed and the social and political policies that may or may not exist to assist persons living into old age. [...] Baker's book provides something for everyone, and then some."
--PsycCRITIQUES, American Psychological Association

"Beth Baker courageously and empathetically asks the question many Baby Boomers avoid: How will we make it through our aging years with dignity, independence and pleasure? The answers she receives from folks around the US, straight and LGBT, reassure us that there are already promising paths being carved."
--Michele Kort, Senior Editor, Ms. Magazine

"The audience for this must-read book is [baby] boomers--and everyone else."
--Library Journal