I love to travel but as I've gotten older, it's become too difficult to handle all of the obstacles that happen when you travel so I thought I was done travelling for good...until I read this book! The author is in her 70s and has a disability due to polio at a young age. She has been all over the world and continues to travel even now. She had fantastic ideas on how to handle some of the travel problems she has encountered and suggestions on what countries offer the most help for the disabled and elderly. She also advised about the hotels and airports in major cities all over the world that are best for handicapped people. She even tells some of the problems that she had - some of them humorous - that would stop many people from traveling but she just went on with her life and kept traveling!. This book has definitely give me hope that I can travel again.

Plus her chapters on travel, she has a section about pain, managing doctors and has lots of strength training exercises that have helped her with pain over the years. She's a real advocate of exercising in a pool. The last section is about finding and sharing with people with long term health problems. She also has a very enlightening chapter about how handicapped people want to be addressed and treated and how to be a good caregiver for someone else. Francine Falk Allen is a fantastic for handicapped and aging people all over the world.

If you have mobility problems for any reason or are a caregiver for someone else, you need to read this uplifting book.

"My desire is that you have found something in this book that's useful, inspiring, fun or all three" (p 205)

Thanks to the publisher for a copy of this book to read and review.

If you think of this book mainly as a memoir with advice, it's not too bad. However, it considers itself as an advice book for the handicapped and that's the problem. It is only advice from Falk-Allen's own point of view. And, as it would be for any single POV advice book, it's quite limited.

Yes, what's there can be quite good, but it just does not take into account experiences outside her own. For example, in her chapter on exercise she mentions at the beginning that there are methods of yoga for those who are chair- or bed-bound, nothing else in the chapter helps with that. In fact, all the exercises assume you can be on the floor.

This happens throughout the book in her chapters on travel, activism, and even on finding support groups.

Perhaps if it were considered a memoir and recast somewhat, this book would be better, but as it is, the book is quite flawed. As a lifelong "crip," the author should know better.