A Handbook for Aging

Ever think humans need to come with a user's manual to explain the aging process? According to the Washington Post article on April 22, 2016, help is on the way.  ‘Old Age: A Beginner’s Guide’: What you really need to know about life’s later years reviews “Old Age: A Beginner’s Guide.”  The article describes the author

Kinsley is both realistic and remarkably cheerful in writing about aging, death and his own health in this brief collection of essays, some of which have appeared in Time, the New Yorker and elsewhere. The book is framed as a guide to old age for Kinsley’s contemporaries. “Sometimes I feel like a scout for my generation,” he writes, “sent out ahead to experience in my fifties what even the healthiest boomers are going to experience in their sixties, seventies or eightes.”

He describes the Boomers as wanting longevity but really wanting cognition.  The Post describes the book as a fun and informative read. 

Whether offering a final set of goals for achievement-oriented boomers, describing his DBS (deep brain stimulation) surgery, debating stem-cell research or defending his decision after the Parkinson’s diagnosis (“I chose denial”), Kinsley, a contributing columnist to The Washington Post, is refreshingly straightforward and often wickedly funny.

The New York Times review of the book is available here.