ABSTRACT
Many young people do not truly believe that they will grow old and turn conversations away from this grey area to anything more congenial. Because it is likely that young readers will be undergraduates, graduate students and health professionals who need a coursebook in cognitive gerontology, the chapters in this book are referenced to allow them to explore topics further for academic or professional reasons. Middle-aged people may read the book for different reasons. In their uneasy time of life, many of them desperately want to be told something encouraging: ideal news would be that theirs is the first generation of humans for whom aging and mortality have been indefinitely postponed or, at least, that they personally will be spared the particular changes that they most fear. Of course, most are, quite rightly, far too savvy for breathless optimism.
