A miscellany of musings about aging, love, work, and wisdom. Nevins (b. 1939), an acclaimed producer of TV documentaries who has won numerous Emmy, Peabody, and other awards, makes her literary debut with a collection of essays, poetry, and stories, often entertaining and, as she admits, -sometimes silly.- Frequently, her theme is the assault of aging, beginning with her decision to get a face- and eye-lift, at the age of 56. At the surgeon's office, examining her face in a magnifying mirror, she was horrified: -I saw a wrinkled, witchlike, scrunched up, squashed face,- she recalls. Working in media, she believed she had to hide her age. -Nobody wanted advice from an old broad,- she writes. Her surgery, though, intensified her obsession with her looks. -I heard a metronome ticking in my head- that made her focus on every wrinkle, rushing to her dermatologist for every -new fix.- Nevins also spent huge amounts of money on her teeth. She wishes she could face aging gracefully, but being surrounded by pretty, bright, and slender young women makes her angry. Besides aging, dieting, Viagra, and menopause, the author records a conversation overheard on a train between two women, one of whom, it turns out, was having an affair with the other's husband. -I wished John Updike was around to hear them,- Nevins remarks. Other pieces focus on family: her demanding, impatient mother, who had a form of Reynaud's disease so severe that her forearm needed to be amputated; and her son, who slowly developed Tourette's syndrome when he was 3.

Famed documentary producer Sheila Nevins is the one person who always tells it like it is, and who will say, "Learn from my mistakes and my successes. Because you don't get smarter as you get older, you get braver." An astonishingly frank, funny, poignant book about the real-life challenges of being a woman in a man's world; what it means to be a working mother; what it's like to be an older woman in a youth-obsessed culture; the sometimes changing, often sweet truth about marriages; what being a feminist really means; and that you are in good company if your adult children don't return your phone calls. -- adapted from book jacket.