Why Did Grandma Put Her Underwear in the Refrigerator?: An Explanation of Alzheimer's Disease for Children by Max Wallach
This sensitive children's story provides its young readers with a toolbox to help them overcome their fears and frustrations. It shares easy-to-understand explanations of what happens inside the brains of Alzheimer's patients, how to cope with gradual memory loss, with a missed holiday, or even a missing Grandma! This 40-page fully illustrated children's book is told from a second-grader's perspective in her own style and vocabulary, but it lovingly shares real strategies, scientific insights and lessons of dignity from which adult caregivers may also benefit.
Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage
by Alice Munro
This collection of short stories is by Canadian author Alice Munro, who was awarded the 2013 Nobel Prize in October. This book is not one of her more recent collections, but its nine stories are all set in Munro's favorite settings: the tiny towns southern Ontario and British Columbia. There are glimpses of youth in the book, but most of the pieces are stories of aging women and men, confronting the challenges of death and late love. Munro's skill is depicting real people in all their unsentimental complexity and she vividly provokes the reader's thinking about old age.
Emily, Alone 
by Stewart O'Nan
This quiet little novel follows Emily Maxwell, a widow whose grown children have long since moved away from the Pittsburgh neighborhood where Emily still lives, mourning the neighborhood's changes over the decades. Her main companions are Rufus, a fat old spaniel, and her sister-in-law Arelene. When Arlene faints at their favorite breakfast buffet, Emily's days change, as she must now take up driving again. As Emily grapples with her new independence, she discovers a hidden strength and realizes that life always offers new possibilities. Like many older women, Emily is a familiar yet invisible figure, but this honest portrayal of a woman in the last decades of her life will resonate, even after you've finished her story.
Twelve Breaths a Minute: End-of-Life EssaysEdited by Lee Gutkind
These compelling essays about the end of life are written by physicians, health care professionals, hospice and palliative care providers, family members, and others. Together, they powerfully confront the challenges, gifts, and realities of life at its end. An indictment of the healthcare system and the funeral industry, and a celebration of how far we have come in helping people achieve a good death, this collection is sometimes heart-wrenching, sometimes uplifting, and always honest. It is a powerful and educational read relevant for anyone who lives in this world and loves other people.
They Live On: Saying Goodbye to Mom and Dad
by Patricia A. Nugent
This book is more powerful when read in random segments, in short sessions interspersed with periods of reflection. They Live On is a series of journal entries made over an 18-month period, when the author was coping with the downhill trajectories of both of her parents: her mother was dying from a brain tumor and her father from complications of a broken hip. Some of the entries are story-like and others are pure poetry. All are emotionally intense, running the gamut from fear, regret, anger and grief to joy, wonder, love and gratitude. Nugent confronts every imaginable caregiving challenge: dysfunctional family relationships, confrontations with health care providers, denial of claims by insurance companies (her parents were 'out of network,' stranded by illness in another state), overwhelming fatigue, and lingering feelings of guilt and loss. Although not a light or easy read, this book is nevertheless an eloquent and thought-provoking one that will strike a chord with anyone who has been a caregiver for, or who has lost or faces losing, an elder parent.
Often nursing homes are portrayed in the media as uniformly horrible places. Sue Halpern's A Dog Walks Into a Nursing Home: Lessons in the Good Life from an Unlikely Teacher gives a nuanced picture of both the problems and possibilities of long-term care. She writes movingly and honestly about training her dog and about her own reactions as she brings him to visit elders.
It is sometimes difficult to find books to recommend about social policy issues. By the time a book is written, published, and you get around to reading it, the policy landscape may have changed dramatically. A very good and recent book is Frederick R. Lynch's One Nation Under AARP: The Fight Over Medicare, Social Security, and America's Future. He looks at recent policy battles with a focus on the role of America's largest special interest group.
