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Old Age

a Beginner's Guide
Apr 08, 2017
This book is supposed to be about aging. But there's a lot about the author's coping with his Parkinson's disease, and it turns out the book isn't about aging in general--it's about the aging of the baby boom generation. Or is it? Maybe it's about the whining of the baby boom generation. That's the big problem with this rambling but short-read (you can zip right through it in a few hours) book. You can't tell what the point is supposed to be. Yes, the author moralizes that life shouldn't really be about how many toys one can collect. He also denigrates the Edifice Complex--buying yourself immortality by funding (actually, the author says, almost always partially funding) a building. And he offers some good rationales for the estate tax. But unlike Atul Gawande's Being Mortal, the author doesn't suggest what each of us might do to make aging a more fulfilling stage of life. Instead the author offers a suggestion for how the baby boom generation can collectively save its reputation. This is not to say the book doesn't have some amusing moments. It does. Kinsley is a clever writer. But if you're looking for a how-to book on aging, this isn't it.