Karl A. Pillemer

Karl Pillemer is a professor of human development at Cornell University and Professor of Gerontology in Medicine at the Weill Cornell Medical College. An internationally renowned family sociologist, his research examines how people develop and change throughout their lives. He has authored six books and over 150 scientific publications, and speaks throughout the world on aging-related issues. His new book tackles the widespread and devastating problem of estrangement in families. In Fault Lines: Fractured Families and How to mend them, Dr. Pillemer combines the advice of people who have successfully reconciled with powerful insights from social science research. Fault Lines shares for the first time findings from Dr. Pillemer's five-year, ground-breaking Cornell Reconciliation Project. Based on cutting-edge research, he assures people who are estranged, and those who care about them, that they are not alone and that family rifts can be bridged. Dr. Pillemer's two previous books also tap the lived wisdom of people who have lived through and surmounted life's challenges. After a chance encounter with a remarkable 90-year old woman, Dr. Pillemer decided to find out what older people know about life that the rest of us don't. His quest led him to ask more than a thousand older Americans their advice for living. He asked about all the big issues - love, marriage, children, work, happiness, avoiding regrets. This 6-year project led to the book: 30 Lessons for Living: Tried and True Advice from the Wisest Americans, published in November 2011. More information on the project can be found at http://legacyproject.human.cornell.edu/.