Passionate Longevity: The 10 Secrets to Growing Younger

William Glassman is a professor of psychology at Ryerson Polytechnical
University.

As a health practitioner (a chiropractor) for nearly 20 years, Elaine
Dembe was struck by the range of attitudes her patients had toward their
health and their lives. A rare few seemed to embrace life, regardless of
their age. This book is an entertaining account of her views on how to
live better.

Those who have read any of the plethora of self-help, alternative
medicine books of the past 10 years will find much that is familiar
here, from the interactions of attitudes with the immune system to the
role of diet and exercise in health. Unfortunately, this familiarity is
also the book’s greatest weakness: there are really no new ideas here,
just a new compilation of concepts pioneered by others, from Martin
Seligman to Norman Cousins. Though Dembe draws on her extensive clinical
experience for anecdotal illustrations and describes these cases in an
engaging manner, the ostensible “ research” that is the basis of her
“10 secrets” really amounts to interviewing a nonrandom sample of
individuals, chosen because of their attitude. Therefore, readers should
not expect to find much in the way of serious evidence here. Indeed,
even what little research by others is cited is rarely accompanied by
full identification of the sources. A single page of suggestions for
further reading is given at the end.

To those wishing to explore the issue for the first time, Passionate
Longevity may serve as a reasonable choice. Readers more familiar with
the book’s concepts should look elsewhere.