Old Age

Michael Kinsley, the longtime political journalist and Vanity Fair columnist, turns his attention to the generation he belongs to. The baby boomers are the largest age cohort ever recorded, and they are now nearing the end of life and thinking about how to play their last moves. Kinsley asks what they will make of it all. Did the years come down to accumulating possessions or to changing the world? Does success mean holding on to your mental faculties? Or does the only lasting measure turn out to be the reputation you leave behind?

The book is a set of essays built around his own experience of Parkinson's disease, which he was diagnosed with in his forties. He treats his illness as a kind of early report from the road ahead. In his words, he sometimes feels like a scout sent out from his generation to meet in his fifties what even the healthiest boomers will face in their sixties, seventies or eighties. That vantage point lets him tackle questions about aging, mortality and legacy that eventually reach everyone.

Despite the subject, the tone is wry and often cheerful. Kinsley is frequently funny about his own decline, and he looks at his peers with a skeptical, affectionate eye. He suggests that misfortune can at least repay its victim by being interesting, and he finds that his illness has done so. The result is both a sharp assessment of a generation and a personal, humorous account of one man heading toward the finish line.