Bateson argues that home is the best place to learn to deal with difference and that learning to communicate across generations is the key to understanding the vast possibilities life has to offer. Bateson explores this theme through her Life Histories seminar at Spelman college where she introduces us to a remarkable and varied cast of women, from "the elders, " who include grandmothers, divorced businesswomen, and Spelman's own president, to undergraduates wrestling with questions of sexuality, identity, expectation, and fulfillment. The members of the group talk about the transitions in their lives, their ties of family, their hopes and choices. Bateson combines their lives with life histories from around the world -- from Kung tribeswoman, to sharecroppers and recent immigrants, to her own mother Margaret Mead - to show the commonality between experiences which may, at first, seem very different and to demonstrate how evolvingdefinitions of wisdom, commitment, and learning can speak to a new common understanding for us all.