One ofThe Daily Telegraph’s Greatest Books of 2025
A life-affirming exploration of the rich emotional lives of the elderly across thousands of years of human history.
Winter Dreamsis an evocative history of the ways the old have thought, felt, and expressed themselves over two millennia, tracking the experience of aging through artistic, literary, and historical records. While old age is often depicted as “sans teeth, sans eyes, sans everything,” Barbara H. Rosenwein shows that the elderly have always retained their emotional depth and desires. She explores how these have changed over time, as societies’ views of the elderly and a “good” old age have changed. Through careful critique of these texts, she allows the elderly, so often absent from the historical record, to speak to us.
We live in a rapidly aging society, yet ageism is rampant and death and dying are taboo subjects. Rosenwein’s book is a finely wrought testimony to the value of aging and the richness of our “winter dreams.”
Barbara H. Rosenweinis a pioneering historian whose books explore the many ways in which different groups have experienced, valued, and expressed emotions over time. She is professor emerita at Loyola University Chicago.
“The ancients also knew plenty about old age and how we should approach it. In this fascinating history of the elderly, Rosenwein returns to the classical world to explore how Cicero, Euripides and Sophocles presented the winter of our lives—which, it transpires, was with rather more fullness and humanity than people show today.”
A lovely title,Winter Dreams, for a book about the elderly, about how through history the world has regarded them, about how they have regarded themselves. Rosenweins subtitle isA Historical Guide to Old Age. The author . . . has written not a l£(
![Winter Dreams: A Historical Guide to Old Age [Hardcover]](/itemImage/2/8/8/6/2_7282487.jpg "Winter Dreams: A Historical Guide to Old Age [Hardcover]")