Number Our Days
Sign in to keep track of books you’ve read and want to read.
When noted anthropologist Barbara Myerhoff received a grant to explore the process of aging, she decided to study some elderly Jews from Venice, California, rather than to report on a more exotic people. The story of the rituals and lives of these remarkable old people is, as Bel Kaufman said, "one of those rare books that leave the reader somehow changed."
Read more
Here Dr. Myerhoff records the stories of a culture that seems to give people the strength to face enormous daily problems — poverty, neglect, loneliness, poor health, inadequate housing and physical danger. The tale is a poignant one, funny and often wise, with implications for all of us about the importance of ritual, the agonies of aging, and the indomitable human spirit.
Liked Number Our Days? Here’s where I’d start.
These suit anyone who liked Number Our Days. Sign in and mark a few books for picks shaped around your own taste.
-
Vita: Life in a Zone of Social Abandonment Shares anthropology, ethnography, nonfiction -
Portraits of 'The Whiteman': Linguistic Play and Cultural Symbols Among the Western Apache Shares anthropology, nonfiction, ethnography -
Chronicle of the Guayaki Indians Shares anthropology, nonfiction, ethnography -
Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande Shares anthropology, nonfiction, ethnography
