The 50 Year Dash

A man turning 50 was asked if he really felt middle-aged.  I don't feel middle-aged he replied.  I feel like a teenager who's been in a fight.. That funny chin-up defiant declaration captures Bob Greene's own feelings about life at the big five-oh and sets the tone for this wonderful new book of reflections on family career money sex mortality friendship regrets memories doctors rivals yearnings sleep lust embarrassments and horizons.  The 50-Year Dash touches on everything that's part of life at fifty: looking at aches and pains as a growth industry and seeing the constant onslaught of new pain relievers as a modern version of the British invasion of rock groups in the 1960s; finding that the world is no longer sufficiently quiet and that you're the one yelling Turn that down!; realizing you're older than James Bond ever was; hearing yourself say The fruit plate looks good and meaning it; understanding that the one thing which seems to be going away from you the fastest is that first-time feeling--first job first house first kiss--and knowing that the best thing you can do for yourself is try to keep finding that feeling again and again.. Between now and the year 2014 77 million American men and women will turn 50 entering a strange land that once seemed so far away.  The 50-Year Dash is a whimsical wise funny bittersweet evocative nostalgic book to take along on the journey.. Bob Greene's national bestsellers include Be True to Your School; Hang Time: Days and Dreams with Michael Jordan; Good Morning Merry Sunshine; and with his sister D.G. Fulford To Our Children's Children: Preserving Family Histories for Generations to Come.  Greene is a syndicated columnist for the Chicago Tribune; his column appears in more than two hundred newspapers in the United States Canada and Japan.  For nine years his American Beat was the lead column in Esquire magazine; and as a broadcast journalist he has served as contributing correspondent for ABC News Nightline.  The 50-Year Dash is his sixteenth book.  His next--Chevrolet Summers Dairy Queen Nights--will be published in the fall of 1997.