At a time when many people all over the world are living intotheir tenth decade, the longest longitudinal research of human development everundertaken offers some welcome news for the brand new old age: our lives continue toevolve inside our afterwards years and often become more fulfilling than before.

Begun in 1938, the Offer Study of Adult Advancement chartedthe physical and emotional health of over 2 hundred men, starting with theirundergraduate times. The now-classic Adaptation alive reported on themen’s about Triumphs of Knowledge: The Guys of the Harvard Give Study lives up to age fifty-five and helped us understand adult maturation. NowGeorge Vaillant follows the men into their nineties, documenting for the firsttime what it is like to flourish much beyond conventional retirement.

Reporting on all areas of man life-includingrelationships, politics and religion, coping strategies, and alcoholic beverages use-Triumphsof Experience shares a number of surprising findings. For instance, thepeople who do well in old age did not always do so well in midlife andvice versa. As the research confirms that recovery from a lousy child years ispossible, memories of a happy childhood certainly are a lifelong way to obtain strength.Marriages bring much more contentment after age seventy, and physical agingafter eighty is set less by heredity than by practices formed prior to age group fifty.The credit for ageing with grace and vitality, it appears, goes more toourselves than to your stellar genetic makeup.