The Blue Zones

Lessons for Living Longer from the People Who've Lived the Longest

By: Dan Buettner

Narrated by: Michael McConnohie

Length: 7 hrs and 38 mins

Publisher's summary

Award-winning author and researcher Dan Buettner has traveled the world to meet the planet’s longest-lived people, and learned nine powerful yet simple lessons that could put you on the path to longer life. Where did he find them? In the Blue Zones.

Blue Zones are communities where common elements of lifestyle, diet, and outlook have led to an amazing quantity – and quality – of life. Dan Buettner shares the secrets from four of the world’s Blue Zones. Buettner’s extensive study uncovers how these people manage to live longer and better, but found in the everyday things they do: the food they eat, the company they keep, and their very perspectives on life. In The Blue Zones, they become yours to follow for life!

©2010 Dan Buettner (P)2010 Dreamscape Media, LLC

Critic reviews

"One of the most hopeful and motivating quality-of-life audio lessons available." ( AudioFile)

It was fascinating!

Amazing. It really helps to show the plagues of our time really are what keeps us from living longer.

Positive and uplifting

Great information without being too “self help”. Pretty interesting information. Will be listing to the next book.

The Blue Zones

enjoyed it. written like a travel novel cross documentary. Full of fascinating facts about longevity and many characterful sentenarians. I was thrilled that the book summarises practical ways of implementing longevity practices as part of our own daily existence. The performance was entertaining as each character came to life in their authentic personality and quirks.

EXCELLENT!

Really enjoyed listening to this book. It's packed with interesting and useful information and is also very well narrated.

Insightful and delightful

This book is inspirational and surprisingly engaging. I love learning from those who have walked the path before me. The author has a clever way of integrating story and stats. I am motivated to building a strong support system and change the way I live in order to truly thrive.

interesting data of how simple life is meant to be

I think that this book provides sufficient stories about people and lifestyles that would inspire to adopt a better habit for eating socializing working and generally and simply putting it living.

Eye Opening

This book was amazing! As someone who (thinks) she loves a healthy lifestyle, I learned so much.
Highly recommend.

Great book.

Great book to live by. I already started implementing everything I listened to into my life. I just wish the reader (if it was a real person) would have pronounced “Lived” correctly instead of “live” like the word “jive” That kept driving me crazy. Another than that, I highly recommend

Excellent audio book with great supporting website

The message is one of hope and practical advice on how to maximise both length and quality of life. An excellent book, well read and easy to listen to, with great supporting website. At first I thought the findings might be summarised more quickly, and wanted to just go to the last chapter. Perhaps I would have if I had a paper copy. However, in hindsight, I have the concepts more firmly committed to memory by listening to the case studies. Like church sermons or university lectures, the stories serve me as hooks on which to pin the lessons.

I love the way the reader attempts to use appropriate accents for the different nationalities of the people he refers to. I am a Kiwi, and so had to laugh a bit at his New Zealand accent attempt, but then I am sure he would laugh at my take on an American accent. Good on ya mate for having a crack at it!

Is it easy to put this advice into practice? I would say yes. I bought a bag of Almond nuts and enjoying this new addition to my diet. My own recommendation is whole grain porridge with sultanas and apple mixed into it.

Read it today ... you will get this time investment back many times over I expect. Cheers.

Nice collection of stories - but not much more

I guess this is one of those books that you could actually get the abridged version and probably get the most out of it more efficiently. Ironically enough, that's probably just the thing the book talks about that people should avoid :)

Based on the book cover this looks like one of those annoying self-help books which almost turned me away from this. But since I googled out Dan Buettner and looked at his credentials of writing to the National Geographic, it somehow made me convinced that this might be worth checking out. I still wish they'd make a different cover, even it seems shallow or non-important thing for many.

And the book kinda was worth checking out. The stories from people Dan interviews are fascinating and their lifestyles are worth investigating. This really made me think of how modern people live their lives and how much time have changed things that are important to us. Not all of us can live in the mountains and herd sheeps and not have any income at all, but there's still lessons top be learned.

It's also fascinating to think of how much these people have actually seen throughout their lives. How very much times have changes during the past century. I mean some of these people have been living post WWI era, seen the Titanic being built and lived through the Great Depression, WWII to the birth of the modern science and all. It's also funny that in one of the people Dan interviews, the centenary man says he picked up some sweets from the market place to his son, who likes'em a lot. For some reason I automatically imagine someone's child to be a giddy schoolboy who is excited to get some candy from his father. Turned out that his son was over 80 years old :)

If you're not interested in the stories of old people or are just expecting a list on how to add more years to your life, just google it out. There's no magic pill or solution obviously, but Dan makes a pretty decent list at the end of the book to summarize the things science either knows or suggests that add up to a healthy life. They all make sense.

I have to say that throughout the book the religious part somehow annoyed me, even it was kept at bay most of the time. It is said in the book that being religious or having spiritual habits adds up to more years, mostly through routines and social contacts, and it's never even suggested that afterlife has anything to do with it. Yet it sill bothers me how big part the religion seems to be in all of this, but that's probably subjective and not a real problem.