"I prefer to call old age an adventure, while others may call it a calamity. The difference is that a calamity has to be accepted... Every adventure involves risks. At the same time it is the unexpected, the new, the surprise, and, for those who are brave enough to consent, a strong temptation."

These Vintage Years is a wonderfully warm celebration of age and of life—the joys and disappointments, the solitary satisfactions, the times of change and beginning again.

Margot Benary-Isbert's views on life are not recently arrived at in the realization that the years have slipped by, but are the mature reflections of a complete person. To share her perceptive thoughts on family, friends, travel, education, and writing, as well as the realities of loneliness and loss, is to know one who looks upon age as an adventure and an invitation.

These Vintage Years is a uniquely personal book which challenges young and old alike, not to endure, but to experience, to risk... to live. 

From the dust jacket