New American Pilgrim

By Marilyn Johnson AARP July 28, 2006 If a mother or a teacher wrote a book about American history and everything you could learn driving around the country, it would bomb. Packed with goody-goody facts, it could never convey the right tone, never be cool. Did you...

The Coolest Gift

By Marilyn Johnson AARP December 8, 2006 It took me a while to figure out that to buy a book was to vote for it. I get it now: if I like a book or a writer, I speak with my wallet. I end up with some wonderful books, of course, but I also get to telegraph my values to...

b. 1975

By Marilyn Johnson AARP February 24, 2006 After a few decades, you get accustomed to picking up a Joyce Carol Oates book without marveling at its existence—another inspired, ingenious, and compulsively readable tale from someone whose books flow past in a glittering...

Dad’s Last Visit

By Pat Jordan AARP November/December 2006 My father died in the spring of 2005, a year-and-a-half after my mother died, and a week after he visited my wife and me in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He was 95. She was 97. My niece was with my father when he died in a...