Life Passages For Men

We assume men grow up. But do they? Dr. Jim Wilder contends that many men never fully mature because they fail to negotiate the passage from boyhood to manhood. An almost equally tragic trend occurs when men never make the transition to grandfathers and elders in their families, churches, and wider communities.

Learn how to better navigate the challenges of adult life with Gail Sheehy’s landmark bestseller—named one of the ten most influential books of our times by the Library of Congress. For decades, Gail Sheehy’s Passages has been inspiring readers to see the predictable crises of adult life as opportunities for growth. She charts the stages between 18 and 50 as unfolding in a pattern of adult development: once recognized, more easily managed. Passages is an insightful road map of adulthood that illustrates with vivid stories our continuing personality and sexual changes throughout the “Trying 20s,” “Catch 30s,” “Forlorn 40s,” and “Refreshed (or Resigned) 50s.” One comment is continuously repeated by men, women, singles, couples, and people who recover from a midlife crisis: “This book changed my life.”

Her stunning bestsellers Passages and New Passages brilliantly mapped the changes we live through from youth to maturity. Now Gail Sheehy guides contemporary men through the turbulent challenges and surprising pleasures that begin at forty. As a man crosses that threshold, he is bound to ask midlife's most troubling question: Now what? Work anxieties, concerns over sexual potency, marital and family stress, issues of power, all take on new urgency as men contemplate the decades ahead. But as Gail Sheehy reveals in this major new book, midlife is precisely the period when men are most likely to reinvent themselves and become masters of their fate. In Understanding Men's Passages, Sheehy offers all men--and the women in their lives--an essential guide to self-discovery. Hundreds of bold, imaginative men--celebrities as well as everyday heroes--share here their most intimate desires, deepest fears, and most fervent cravings for renewal. Decade by decade, Sheehy uncovers the real issues facing men today: finding new passion and purpose to invigorate the second half of their lives, dealing with "manopause," surviving job change, enjoying post-nesting zest, defeating depression, and learning what keeps a man young. Informative and inspiring, grounded in fact and full of fascinating life stories, Understanding Men's Passages is a landmark that will take its place beside Gail Sheehy's epoch-making Passages and New Passages.

THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Millions of readers literally defined their lives through Gail Sheehy's landmark bestseller Passages. Seven years ago she set out to write a sequel, but instead she discovered a historic revolution in the adult life cycle. . . People are taking longer to grow up and much longer to die. A fifty-year-old woman--who remains free of cancer and heart disease-- can expect to see her ninety-second birthday. Men, too, can expect a dramatically lengthened life span. The old demarcations and descriptions of adulthood--beginning at twenty-one and ending at sixty-five--are hopelessly out of date. In New Passages, Gail Sheehy discovers and maps out a completely new frontier--a Second Adulthood in middle life. "Stop and recalculate," Sheehy writes. "Imagine the day you turn forty-five as the infancy of another life." Instead of declining, men and women who embrace a Second Adulthood are progressing through entirely new passages into lives of deeper meaning, renewed playfulness, and creativity--beyond both male and female menopause. Through hundreds of personal and group interviews, national surveys of professionals and working-class people, and fresh findings extracted from fifty years of U.S. Census reports, Sheehy vividly dramatizes these newly developing stages. Combining the scholar's ability to synthesize data with the novelist's gift for storytelling, she allows us to make sense of our own lives by understanding others like us. New Passages tells us we have the ability to customize our own life cycle. This groundbreaking work is certain to awaken and permanently alter the way we think about ourselves. "SHEEHY CLEARLY STATES IDEAS ABOUT LIFE THAT HAVE NEVER BEFORE BEEN AS CLEARLY STATED." --Los Angeles Times Book Review "AN OPTIMISTIC ANALYSIS OF ADULT DEVELOPMENT IN PESSIMISTIC TIMES. . . It is grounded in the economic and psychological realities that make adult life so complex today." --The New York Times Book Review

Scripture taken from the Holy Bible: New International Version (NIV).

Passages from the Life and Writings of William Penn by Thomas Pym Cope, first published in 1882, is a rare manuscript, the original residing in one of the great libraries of the world. This book is a reproduction of that original, which has been scanned and cleaned by state-of-the-art publishing tools for better readability and enhanced appreciation. Restoration Editors' mission is to bring long out of print manuscripts back to life. Some smudges, annotations or unclear text may still exist, due to permanent damage to the original work. We believe the literary significance of the text justifies offering this reproduction, allowing a new generation to appreciate it.

Scripture reveals a God who meets us where we are, not where we pretend to be. No More Faking Fine is your invitation to get honest with God through the life-giving language of lament. If you've ever been given empty clichés during challenging times, you know how painful it is to be misunderstood by well-meaning people. When life hurts, we often feel pressure--from others and ourselves--to keep it together, suck it up, or pray it away. But Scripture reveals a God who lovingly invites us to give honest voice to our emotions when life hits hard. For most of her life, Esther Fleece Allen believed she could bypass the painful emotions of her broken past by shutting them down altogether. She was known as an achiever and an overcomer on the fast track to success. But in silencing her pain, she robbed herself of the opportunity to be healed. Maybe you've done the same. Esther's journey into healing began when she discovered that God has given us a real-world way to deal with raw emotions and an alternative to the coping mechanisms that end up causing more pain. It's called lament--the gut-level, honest prayer that God never ignores, never silences, and never wastes. No More Faking Fine is your permission to lament, taking you on a journey down the unexpected pathway to true intimacy with God. Drawing from careful biblical study and hard-won insight, Esther reveals how to use God's own language to come closer to him as he leads us through our pain to the light on the other side, teaching you that: We are robbing ourselves of a divine mystery and a divine intimacy when we pretend to have it all together God does not expect us to be perfect; instead, he meets us where we are There is hope beyond your heartache, disappointment, and grief Like Esther, you'll soon find that when one person stops faking fine, it gives everyone else permission to do the same.