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Old Age: A Beginner’s Guide

A poignant, funny, deeply personal portrait of aging and illness from a beloved, legendary journalist and Vanity Fair columnis.

Coming of age at a time of dramatic social change, both at home and abroad, the Baby Boomer generation found expression in the issues that eventually defined their world and ours: rock and roll, sexual liberation, and protests. But now, the generation that invented youth has suddenly run out of it. Where did all the years go?

In this series of warm and witty essays, Michael Kinsley takes an irreverent look at the Boomer generation all grown up, exploring the darkest and most personal subjects, from illness to identity to social anxiety, all while bringing an unusual perspective to the story. Using his own twenty-year battle with Parkinson’s as a starting point, Kinsley attempts to unearth answers to questions we are all, sooner or later, forced to confront: How should we deal with our imminent demise? What is our legacy, both as individuals and a generation? While he explores the possibility of fading and senility, he also looks at giving up driving, taking endless cognitive examinations, and undergoing surgery – all with himself as the guinea pig.

“Sometimes,” he writes, “I feel like a scout from my generation, sent out ahead to experience in my fifties what even the healthiest Boomers are going to experience in their sixties, seventies, or eighties.” This witty, deeply affectionate book sets its sights on a generation now grappling with their own mortality and their role in leaving behind a world burdened with debt and bloated with cynicism. It is at once a fresh social investigation and a brave, frequently funny account of one man’s journey toward the finish line. “The least a misfortune can do to make up for itself is to be interesting,” he writes. “Parkinson’s disease has fulfilled that obligation.”