This comprehensive guide works at the nexus of the humanities and health professions to provide the intellectual rationale, history, and a substantive overview of humanistic gerontology as it has emerged in the United States and Europe.

Thomas R. Cole is the McGovern Chair in Medical Humanities and director of the John P. McGovern, M.D., Center for Health, Humanities, and the Human Spirit at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston. Ruth E. Ray is a professor of English at Wayne State University. Robert Kastenbaum is an emeritus professor of gerontology at Arizona State University. Cole, Ray, and Kastenbaum edited the Handbook of the Humanities and Aging, second edition.