{"product_id":"my-life-in-the-middle-ages-a-survivors-tale-9780060955984","title":"My Life in the Middle Ages: A Survivor's Tale","description":"\u003cp\u003eStriving children, aging parents, job pressures, financial anxieties, physical ailments, generalized hope and dread--a memoir of middle age that is both literary and confessional\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e What is the most baffling period in our lives? Not childhood, not old age, but the decades of our forties and fifties, the period now generously known as middle age. Of all the challenges that face us in this time of reckoning, the effort to accept the limits of our character, the dwindling of possibilities, and the gap between our aspirations and reality is perhaps the most daunting. It's both an occasion for regret and an opportunity for coming to terms, the moment when we come up against our limits and discover--for better and worse--who we are.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e My Life in the Middle Ages is a portrait, in 12 chapters, of what that unnerving experience is like. A collection of unified essays about the pleasures and pathos that haunt us on the threshold of old age, it charts an original course between reportage and confession. Drawn from the author's own life, from the testimony of parents, children, teachers, and friends, from the books he's read and the life that he chose (and that chose him), My Life in the Middle Ages is a comic and poignant memoir that's both personal and generational.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eAtlas, James:\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e - \u003cp\u003eJames Atlas has been an editor for the \u003cem\u003eNew York Times Book Review\u003c\/em\u003e and the \u003cem\u003eNew York Times Magazine\u003c\/em\u003e and a staff writer for \u003cem\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eThe Atlantic\u003c\/em\u003e. He is the founder of Atlas Books and the general editor of the Eminent Lives series. His other books include \u003cem\u003eDelmore Schwartz: The Life of an American Poet\u003c\/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003eBellow: A Biography\u003c\/em\u003e, and a novel, \u003cem\u003eThe Great Pretender\u003c\/em\u003e. He lives with his wife and two children in New York City.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Harper Perennial","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50843988656402,"sku":"9780060955984","price":12.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_796e5ffd-fd74-4673-a0aa-c0385c239dcd.jpg?v=1737305932","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/my-life-in-the-middle-ages-a-survivors-tale-9780060955984","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}