Louise Foxcroft is a historian of medicine and the author of The Making of Addiction: Opiate Use and Abuse in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Ashgate, 2007) and Hot Flushes, Cold Science: A History of the Modern Menopause (Granta, 2009). Mary Crockett in the Scotsman called Hot Flushes a “gripping study of western attitudes to women of a certain age and older”. She went on: “The good news, sisters – and brothers, if you’re still reading – is that Foxcroft’s study, complete with extensive endnotes and an entertainingly compiled index, arrives at a constructive conclusion. The thrust of her message is: it’s time we changed our way of thinking on ageing. For starters, it’s a natural process, not a disease. Second, women aren’t in it alone, not everything being rosy in the male mid-life department.” Louise appeared in programme 25, “Menopause and Medicine”, on Podularity to talk about the book. You’ll find that podcast here. Philip Roth, The Dying Animal (Jonathan Cape, 2001) Had I read this book when I was thirty I would have felt threatened and …