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Penguin

Life Is in the Transitions: Mastering Change at Any Age

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Description

A New York Times bestseller! A pioneering and timely study of how to navigate life's biggest transitions with meaning, purpose, and skill Bruce Feiler, author of the New York Times bestsellers The Secrets of Happy Families and Council of Dads, has long explored the stories that give our lives meaning. Galvanized by a personal crisis, he spent the last few years crisscrossing the country, collecting hundreds of life stories in all fifty states from Americans who’d been through major life changes—from losing jobs to losing loved ones; from changing careers to changing relationships; from getting sober to getting healthy to simply looking for a fresh start. He then spent a year coding these stories, identifying patterns and takeaways that can help all of us survive and thrive in times of change. What Feiler discovered was a world in which transitions are becoming more plentiful and mastering the skills to manage them is more urgent for all of us. The idea that we’ll have one job, one relationship, one source of happiness is hopelessly outdated. We all feel unnerved by this upheaval. We’re concerned that our lives are not what we expected, that we’ve veered off course, living life out of order. But we’re not alone. Life Is in the Transitions introduces the fresh, illuminating vision of the nonlinear life, in which each of us faces dozens of disruptors. One in ten of those becomes what Feiler calls a lifequake, a massive change that leads to a life transition. The average length of these transitions is five years. The upshot: We all spend half our lives in this unsettled state. You or someone you know is going through one now. The most exciting thing Feiler identified is a powerful new tool kit for navigating these pivotal times. Drawing on his extraordinary trove of insights, he lays out specific strategies each of us can use to reimagine and rebuild our lives, often stronger than before. From a master storyteller with an essential message, Life Is in the Transitions can move readers of any age to think deeply about times of change and how to transform them into periods of creativity and growth. Read more

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Books


Publication date ‏ : ‎ August 10, 2021


Language ‏ : ‎ English


Print length ‏ : ‎ 368 pages


ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1101980516


ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 14


Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 10.8 ounces


Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.39 x 0.75 x 8.31 inches


Best Sellers Rank: #28,849 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #23 in Customs & Traditions Social Sciences #43 in Aging Parents (Books) #45 in Popular Applied Psychology


#23 in Customs & Traditions Social Sciences:


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Top Amazon Reviews

    • well written and meaningful
Format: Kindle
One of the best books I’ve read ( and I read a lot of books). The author presents a premise and then follows it up with captivating stories of real people. This work gives a way to understand the life challenges and changes we all experience. I felt humbled by reading about what others have lived through and then went on to create something new and positive. It helped me to review and understand my own life transitions. An excellent read. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on December 10, 2025 by Jan
    • Insightful and validating.
Format: Kindle
Mr. Feiler validates my experiences through many transitions. I read avidly the books that described the phases and stages I “should” navigate, only to feel like I was doing it wrong. So, I decided to do it my way. As a career & life coach specializing in transition, I suggest to my clients what they might experience, and emphasize that there is no right or wrong, or exact order to it. Something triggers it, life gets chaotic, then it calms down again. And this can take a long time. Throughout this book of 225 stories about life’s most challenging upside-down times, so aptly called “lifequakes” here, Feiler validates that transitions are a part of life. When we accept them, embrace them, endure them, and revisit them, the lessons and learnings will serve us well for the next one. And there will be a next one. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on December 28, 2022 by Maria Tomas-Keegan
    • Interesting comparisons of major life transitions among 225 Americans
Format: Hardcover
4.5 out of 5 stars. I've not told many people but I had, as Feiler would call it, a lifequake almost exactly 3 years ago. While many self-help gurus give advice on the mindsets and some of the skills for transitions (often the advice derives from their general life philosophies or occasionally from a lifequake of their own), very few explore the transitions themselves. Feiler does a great job of analyzing the life transitions of 225 Americans from multiple walks of life and showing us the tools and commonalities these transitions shared. While reading this book, I identified many of the concepts (emotions, tools, processes, etc) Feiler discusses among the development of my own (ongoing) life transition. It is ultimately a book to challenge the linear-life narrative that pervades mainstream thought and to give hope to navigate our increasingly organic/non-linear lives. Why “4.5” and not just “5 out of 5”? 225 people is a substantial number for what seems like a relatively short period but I think this project would flourish with an extension that might explore other countries, ethnic groups, cultures to either strengthen the applicability of Feiler’s findings or to perhaps broaden the toolbox with other worldviews. (I also had 2 minor complaints about 2 graphs but they don’t affect the overall message. The scientist in me was hoping for more info from the research literature to be cited). I still highly recommend the book. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on August 21, 2020 by Jennifer P
    • A roadmap for the times....
Format: Hardcover
This is the first time I have been compelled to write a review. This book deserves it! We all grew up thinking that life moved in a linear path. We got a job, got married, had 2.3 kids, worked dutifully and were rewarded after 30 years with a watch and happy long retirement. That's was our base for comparing our lives trajectory, as Bruce describes in the book, it was to be "linear". Except how many of us truly have that path? Life is full of transitions and some are total disruptors to our thinking...sickness, divorce, job loss, or as in this current time something we could have never imagined on this scale, a pandemic and economic disaster. The question is not if we have disruptors in our lives but how can we cope? This book gives you the roadmap and the tools to better understand why life is not linear and how to not only gain better understanding about what you are going through, to know you are not alone, and how to prepare yourself to get to the other side. Bruce takes us through individual's stories, years of research and a heartfelt approach to giving ourselves grace in these difficult moments and tools to help us cope, survive, and rewrite our own story. This book is a must read! ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on July 26, 2020 by Grady Thomas, III
    • 100% stories (which are good), but 0% actual advice.
Format: Paperback
This is not a bad book, but maybe my expectations were off. Feiler has clearly done a lot of interviewing and is a good storyteller. I recently heard him on a podcast and was blown away! But this entire book is stories -- paragraph after paragraph of different life stories. Feiler refers to himself as a "lifestorian," so I understand that this is exactly what he is good at doing. And, if you'd like to read an entire book of that and then distill the wisdom from it yourself, this would be a good fit for you. But I feel like the book title and description are a tad misleading. The subtitle "mastering change at any age" led me to believe that there would be a lot of synthesis, analysis, and advice, but there is not. It's predominantly one story after another organized by chapter/topic. It doesn't fell like a finished work. It feels like the author gave me the raw data and left me to complete the research and draw conclusions myself. Sorry; only three stars. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on September 18, 2023 by ryan
    • Made a difference in my life when I needed it most
Format: Paperback
Your book gave me strength when I needed it most. The stories you've shared helped me feel connected. And in the end, I was crying at my optimism for the future. Thank you so much for this.
Reviewed in the United States on March 4, 2026 by Amazon Customer
    • surprisingly good book about life trying times.
Format: Kindle
My three takeaways are 1. We experience three to five major life changes , life quakes that turns our lives upside down. 2. They usually last five years sometimes less sometimes more.3. How you navigate these life quakes as the author calls them will determine whether you survive, thrive or get destroyed by them. The book interview hundreds of people and gave insight into how the people handle it. The worse cases -ones were those that had to handle not one but several life quakes at the same time, as the author did, getting a bad medical diagnosis and his father attempted to end his life. Highly recommended. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on July 1, 2024 by stingray
    • Valuable tools to handle life
Format: Hardcover
This book gives you some valuable tools to handle the ups and downs of life. People tend to believe that life is always up and one thing positively leads to another thing all the way to retirement. I think anyone over the age of 21 knows that is a big lie up there with the checks in the mail. The author, Bruce Feiler interviewed scores of people to learn about their life transitions. He took that data to learn about how these processes occur and what steps helped people master the change. It all starts with some sort of catastrophe say like being laid off. He documents that these changes occur about every 12 to 18 months a year to every person. Bruce Feiler's findings that these changes lead to transitions in life. They frequently lead to massive changes or jumps to other things in life like a lifestyle or job change. The book breaks things down to some easy steps to follow to help you deal with these changes. The tools which stood out to me is that we should accept the change, mark it, shred the past, create new rituals, share it with others, launch a new stage and tell the world. If a person would follow those steps you can help master these life changing catastrophes vs. they mastering you. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on August 17, 2020 by Thomas M. Magee

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