The Third Chapter

January 10, 2011

Passion, Risk, and Adventure in the 25 Years After 50
Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot
Farrar, Strauss & Giroux/Sarah Crichton Books

In The Third Chapter, Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot captures a new moment in history—a developmental phase when we are “neither young nor old”—and offers us a book rich with insight and hope about our endless capacity for change and growth.

Renowned sociologist Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot challenges the still-prevailing and anachronistic images of aging by documenting and revealing the ways in which the years between ages fifty and seventy-five—the third chapter—may, in fact, be the most transformative and generative time in a person’s life.

Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot is the Emily Hargroves Fisher Professor of Education at Harvard and the chair of the board of the MacArthur Foundation. As a sociologist, she examines the culture of schools, the patterns and structures of classroom life, socialization within families and communities, and the relationships between culture and learning styles.