The 50 Year Dash: The Feelings, Foibles, and Fears of Being Half a Century Old - Hardcover

Bob Greene is an award-winning journalist and a New York Times bestselling author whose books include Once Upon a Town and Duty. He has been the lead columnist for Life and Esquire, a contributing correspondent for ABC News Nightline, and a syndicated columnist for both the Chicago Sun-Times and the Chicago Tribune, where he worked for 24 years. His book Hang Time: Days and Dreams with Michael Jordan was a bestseller. In 1995, Greene was named Illinois Journalist of the Year, and he also won the Peter Lisagor Award for Public Service Journalism for his reporting on courts failing children in need.

g 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;