Exit: The Endings That Set Us Free (Thorndike Press Large Print Nonfiction Series) - Softcover

"With her trademark grace and insight, Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot has added exit lines to her repertoire. in "Exit," she is a superb storyteller and a wise guide to the inevitable farewells that punctuate our lives and often set us free."--Ellen Goodman, author of "Paper Trail: Common Sense in Uncommon Times" "In searching for the grace and courage of exits at every stage in the life cycle, Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot offers insights into the deeper continuities that exits can affirm, binding us together and emphasizing the meaning in the composition of our lives. She argues the need for our culture to evolve rituals that express these enduring values in facing the unknown."--Mary Catherine Bateson, author of "Composing a Further Life: The Age of Active Wisdom""" "The resonant testimonials Lawrence-Lightfoot spotlights nicely dovetail into a conclusion befitting her research into the inevitability of departures and our individual choice to accept or bemoan them. A finely researched examination that sheds a new light on the catharsis of goodbye."--"Kirkus Reviews" "Lawrence-Lightfoot has penned an examination of how people exit careers, countries, and even life. Believing that the small departures we make daily prepare us for the large ones--emigration, divorce, death--the author argues that each is a drama of ambivalence, decision-making, and epiphany . . ."--"Publishers Weekly "

Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, a MacArthur prize-winning sociologist, is the Emily Hargroves Fisher Professor of Education at Harvard University, where, since 1972, she has studied the culture of families, communities, and schools, and the relationships between human development and social change. She is the author of ten books, including "The Third Chapter," " Respect," "The Essential Conversation," and "Balm in Gilead," which won the 1988 Christopher Award for "literary merit and humanitarian achievement." In 1993, she was awarded Harvard's George Ledlie Prize for research that makes "the most valuable contribution to science" and is to "the benefit of mankind." She is the recipient of twenty-eight honorary degrees and is the first African-American woman in Harvard's history to have an endowed professorship named in her honor.