Roctogenarians

Late in Life Debuts, Comebacks, and Triumphs

Mo Rocca, Jonathan Greenberg

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Year: 2024
• eBook ISBN:
  9781668052525
• Subtopic: Social History

From beloved CBS Sunday Morning correspondent Mo Rocca, author of New York Times bestseller Mobituaries, comes an inspiring collection of stories that celebrates the triumphs of people who made their biggest marks late in life.

Eighty has been the new sixty for about twenty years now. In fact, there have always been late-in-life achievers, those who declined to go into decline just because they were eligible for social security. Journalist, humorist, and history buff Mo Rocca and coauthor Jonathan Greenberg introduce us to the people past and present who peaked when they could have been puttering—breaking out as writers, selling out concert halls, attempting to set land-speed records—and in the case of one ninety-year tortoise, becoming a first-time father. (Take that, Al Pacino!)

In the vein of Mobituaries, Roctogenarians is a collection of entertaining and unexpected profiles of these unretired titans—some long gone (a cancer-stricken Henri Matisse, who began work on his celebrated cut-outs when he could no longer paint), some very much still living (Mel Brooks, yukking it up at close to one hundred). The amazing cast of characters also includes Mary Church Terrell, who at eighty-six helped lead sit-ins at segregated Washington, DC, lunch counters in the 1950s, and Carol Channing, who married the love of her life at eighty-two. Then there’s Peter Mark Roget, who began working on his thesaurus in his twenties and completed it at seventy-three (because sometimes finding the right word takes time.)

With passion and wonder Rocca and Greenberg recount the stories of yesterday’s and today’s strongest finishers. Because with all due respect to the Golden Girls, some people will never be content sitting out on the lanai. (PS Actress Estelle Getty was sixty-two when she got her big break. And yes, she’s in the book.)

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Introduction
• Fast-Food Legends: Colonel Sanders and Clara Peller
• Old Money: Warren Buffett
• Like Fine Wine: Mike Grgich (and Other Things in Your Kitchen That Have No Expiration Date)
• Old Country: Willie Nelson
• The Players: Estelle Getty, Rita Moreno, and Morgan Freeman
• Old Spice: Sophia Loren
• Playing for Herself: Ruth Slenczynska
• Old Chestnut: Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree
• The Writers: Laura Ingalls Wilder, Frank McCourt, and Peter Mark Roget
• The Readers
• Old Testament: Methuselah
• The Changemaker: Mary Church Terrell (and Other Late-in-Life Activists)
• Old Navy: Jimmy Carter
• Old Soldiers Never Die, They Just Reenlist: Samuel Whittemore, John L. Burns, and Yoda
• Old Glory: “The Star-Spangled Banner”
• It Could Happen to You: Third-Act Personal Milestones
• Old Yeller: Ethel Merman
• The Widows: Madame Clicquot, Mary Delany, and Myrlie Evers-Williams
• Old News: Mike Wallace
• Turning Loss into Gain: Henri Matisse, Jorge Luis Borges, and Sam & Betsey Farber
• Old English: Judi Dench
• Ageless Architects: Frank Lloyd Wright, I. M. Pei, and Yasmeen Lari
• Old Town: St. Augustine, Florida
• No Signs of Slowing Down: Ed Shadle
• Old Ironsides: Jack LaLanne
• A Trifecta of Horse Stories: Michael Blowen and Old Friends Retirement Home, Snowman the Show Jumper, and John Henry the Thoroughbred
• Old Faithful: Sister Jean
• Founding Fathers of Comedy: Carl Reiner, Mel Brooks, and Norman Lear (and the Norman Lear Players)
• Old Jokes: Eddy Goldfarb
• Unfinished Business: Diana Nyad and Brian May
• Old Smoky: Tootsie Tomanetz
• It’s About Time: Tyrus Wong, Carmen Herrera, and John Goodenough
• Old-Fashioned: Ann Roth
• Misspent Old Age: Rudy Giuliani, Phil Spector, John Tyler, and Ezra Pound
• Old Fogey: John Fogerty
• An Old Story: Ebenezer Scrooge
• An Appreciation: Maria Luisa Rocca
• Acknowledgments
• About the Authors
• Bibliography
• Copyright