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Book Review: Aging: Concepts and controversies

The ninth edition of Aging: Concepts and Controversies, written by Harry R. Moody and Jennifer R. Sasser, utilizes what is by now a familiar structure for scholars who have used previous editions of this book. The authors link concepts with controversies in three broad domains of aging: the life course, health care, and socioeconomic trends. For each controversy, four or more perspectives from outside writers are presented; sometimes, but not always, these writings contradict one another. This pedagogical design makes this an ideal textbook for graduate students, as well as undergraduate students in honors programs, who are new to the study of aging. Moody and Sasser offer a valuable survey of the major issues in gerontology today from across the scientific and ideological spectrums. It is also worth noting that while the authors have updated some information in the ninth edition, the vast majority of the text is identical to that of the eighth edition. There is justification for much of this replication. Many of the issues identified by Moody and Sasser are perennial; the public policy dilemmas presented by an aging society, for example, have vexed government officials for decades. In addition, many of these readings are timeless and essential. An education in aging is incomplete without exposure to de Beauvoir’s “The Coming of Age,” Rowe and Kahn’s “Successful Aging,” and Erikson et al.’s “Vital Involvement in Old Age,” to name only the first three excerpted works. We gerontologists stand on the shoulders of giants and it is gratifying to see so many giants in our field represented here. At the same time, a careful parsing of the 2018 edition indicates that work needs to be done to bring future editions up to date. Some of this lies beyond the authors’ control, at the time of this edition’s writing, the 2016 election and its aftermath could not be anticipated. However, decisions made by the authors also compromise the timeliness of this book. In some cases, issues have evolved; the debate on health care rationing, which includes three articles written prior to 2000, seems particularly out of date. In some places, more room is needed for different perspectives; LGBTQ elders, for example, are underrepresented, which seems an oversight, given recent policy changes. In other words, instructors who use this book may find it necessary to supplement these readings to fill gaps in information. Moody and Sasser begin the first of three Basic Concepts sections of the book by grounding their approach to human aging in the life course perspective. Human beings have always recognized a progression of life stages, with the number of stages growing as societies became more complex, as in Erik Erikson’s description of eight developmental stages. Moody and Sasser go on to discuss traditional theories of aging (e.g., modernization theory, disengagement theory, and activity theory), mechanisms of physical aging (e.g., wear and tear; free radicals), and psychological adaptations to aging, such as Baltes & Baltes’s “selective optimization with compensation.” Every theory, the authors note, has its limits; none fully explains the variety of ways in which individuals experience old age. The first controversy in this section is “Does Old Age Have Meaning?” The answer appears to be a qualified “yes, if one knows where to look for it.” Transcendence, or generativity, as Moody and Sasser describe, is what makes us human, and it is up to older adults themselves whether that meaning is to be found in leisure, in religion and spirituality, or elsewhere. As the authors describe, the meaning of aging is changing as the stages of life have become more blurred and the writers sampled here have distinct ideas of what it means to “age well,” whether it is through continued activity (Rowe and Kahn) or reflection (Florida Scott-Maxwell). But all agree that old age is unlike any stage that has come before, in which one has exchanged an indefinite future or a finite one, as Simone de Beauvoir describes. Controversy 2 asks “Why Do Our Bodies Grow Old?” and begins with “The Wonderful One-Hoss Shay,” the cart built to run a hundred years to a day. It is an apt metaphor here, because while prolonging the human life span might sound appealing, a more practical objective is to compress morbidity, as described here by Fries and Crapo and by Mor. There are more than 300 biological theories of aging; however, as Moody and Sasser describe, we can distinguish 881225 JAGXXX10.1177/0733464819881225Journal of Applied GerontologyBook Review book-review2019