Steven Mintz reconstructs the emotional interior of a life stage too often relegated to self-help books and domestic melodramas. He describes the challenges of adulthood today and puts them into perspective by exploring how past generations achieved intimacy and connection, raised children, sought meaning in work, and responded to loss.

Operation First Novel 2013 contest winner, Prime of Life was released in Kindle edition only and has garnered in excess of 175 positive reviews with over 6,000 paid downloads.

This examination of Simone de Beauvoir's form of existentialism pays special attention to her work, The Ethics of Ambiguity, in which de Beauvoir draws from many thinkers in the continental tradition to argue that one's own freedom is intertwined with that of others.