Book Reviews

There is no other book like this. It is a fascinating and loving collaboration -- between a wife and a husband; between an artist and a scientist; between the living and the dead.  Sky Above Clouds embodies Dr. gene Cohen’s message of creativity, growth, and care in the face of aging, loss and death.  It is imaginative and fearless, hopeful yet grounded. Read it.

Thomas R. Cole, PhD, University of Texas-Houston School of Medicine, Director, McCovern Chair in Medical Humanities, author of The Journey of Life: A Cultrual History of Aging in America

Dr. Cohen’s groundbreaking work to develop the concept of creative aging has provided a blueprint for the future of aging where growth and development play as important a role as decline and disability. In a work that is both manual and memoir, Dr. Miller incorporates Gene Cohen's voice and thinking into her own and describes how creative aging can enable individuals to grow beyond the limitations imposed by both illness and aging. The story flows beautifully, poignant at places, instructive always, and moving. This book is about facing adversity and loss and how to cope, told in a way that opens up to a broad audience including professionals in psychology, social work, case management, therapeutic programming and the arts who work with older individuals. It will appeal to geriatric psychiatrists and should be highlighted at their meetings.

Marc E. Agronin, MD, Vice President of Behavioral Health at Miami Jewish Health Systems and author of How We Age 

This book takes us into the inner galactic spheres of creative potential and healing. The fact that Cohen’s illness went on for more than 13 years – a powerful condition called ‘Medically, you do not exist’ makes this book a miracle story because this is what gave both authors the opportunity to have such powerful insights. They wrote under the sword of Damocles of his severe metastatic condition, within the context of raising a child, thriving professionally, and loving one another: the miracle of the life that they weren’t supposed to have gave them the opportunity to merge their personal and professional lives, and to flesh out concepts that are not normally understood around aging, illness, and a creative life. This story is amazing to any of us reading.

Sanford Finkel, MD, geriatric psychiatrist, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, University of Chicago Medical School

“Tell your numbers in a rhyme if you can,” an exercise in imagination associated with the game of cribbage, brought two creative healing souls – artist Wendy Miller and scientist Gene Cohen – together in life and death. Their book Sky Above Clouds reveals the twinkling depths of the unfathomable universe of human compassion and wisdom. This beautiful piece of writing intergeneratively blends the quantum and qualia of life and allows us to experience the swirling galactic energy of their shared relationship. It shows us that one and one ae fun and also a few more than two.

Peter Whitehouse, MD, PhD, Professor of Neurology, Case Western Reserve University, author of The Myth of Alzhei​

This book brings us the message of ourselves in our own dream couples of marriage, as Wendy and Gene become our guiding image of what we all carry—the utter terror of losing our beloved soul mates—and sometime in a sleepless night, that awareness knocks at the door. This book is the witness of mourning; that everlasting love, carried in its beautiful, radiant, empowered and yes, sad, language, in its crystallization of that experience, is a pathfinder in the art of aging.

Paolo J Knill, PhD and Margo Fuchs Knill, PhD, Professors, European Graduate School, authors of Minstrels of Soul

Sky Above Clouds is a powerful narrative of illness that will reshape current thinking about chronic disease, health care, aging, and the arts. On one level, it is an intensely personal story of Gene Cohen’s thirteen-year battle with metastatic prostate cancer and Wendy’s insightful observations made throughout the long journey as his wife and caregiver. It chronicles their approach to managing his care when he was deemed a “medical outlier” and the impact of the illness on their relationship, family members, and their professional lives, his as a renowned gero-psychiatrist, researcher, and author and hers as an artist, art therapist, and psychologist. On another level, it portrays how interweaving their unique perspectives as scientist and artist influenced their approach and led to the formulation of an exciting new paradigm about aging and illness, one that emphasizes human potential and the creative spirit to bring new meaning to later life and end of life. Health providers, educators, researchers, and those in the arts and humanities who seek to move beyond entrenched thinking about illness and aging can benefit greatly from this “work of art.”

Linda Noekler, PhD, Adjunct Professor of Sociology, Case Western Reserve University