The goal of adulthood is not to grow up, but to develop what are considered childlike traits: the ability to love, to learn, to won- der, to know, to explore, to experiment. This is the thesis set forth by distinguished anthropologist Ashley Montagu in Growing Young. Based on scientific evidence and years of interdisciplinary research, this revolutionary book shows that we are actually designed to grow and develop all of our lives and that we are not intended to become the ossified adults prescribed by society.

Much of our aging, in the negative sense of reduced capaci- ties, is a result of conditioning rather than actual limitation. It is our evolutionary destiny, Montagu says, to lengthen childhood and rescue ourselves from our "mature" ways before it is too late.

In Growing Young, Montagu has found a subject that is the perfect fit for his interdisciplinary mind, sophisticated wit, and elegant style.

"A very significant and wonderful book.... One comes away from this splendid work with a feeling of hopefulness and optimism."

-Dr. Thomas J. Cottle, Harvard University Medical School

"Growing Young provides the historical and scientific basis for Baudelaire's poetical phrase, 'Genius is childhood recaptured." -René Dubos