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    Never Say Die: The Myth and Marketing of the New Old Age
    Never Say Die: The Myth and Marketing of the New Old Age
    Never Say Die: The Myth and Marketing of the New Old Age
    Audiobook14 hours

    Never Say Die: The Myth and Marketing of the New Old Age

    Written by Susan Jacoby

    Narrated by Laural Merlington

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    In a narrative that combines the intensely personal with social, economic, and historical analysis, Susan Jacoby turns an unsparing eye on the marketers of longevity-pharmaceutical companies, lifestyle gurus, and scientific businessmen who suggest that there will soon be a "cure" for the "disease" of aging. She separates wishful hype from realistic hope in a wide-ranging appraisal of subjects that include the explosion of Alzheimer's cases, the impact of possible cuts in Social Security on the economic future of aging boomers, and the fact that women make up most of the "oldest old." Finally, Jacoby raises the fundamental question of whether living longer is a desirable thing unless it means living better, and she considers the profound moral and ethical concerns raised by increasing longevity.

    Never Say Die is a lucid, provocative, and powerful argument that Americans, no matter their age, are doing themselves no favor by buying into the myth that they can stay "forever young."
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateFeb 8, 2011
    ISBN9781452670379
    Never Say Die: The Myth and Marketing of the New Old Age
    Author

    Susan Jacoby

    Susan Jacoby is the author of five books, including Wild Justice, a Pulitzer Prize finalist. A contributor to The Washington Post, The New York Times, Newsday, and Vogue, she lives in New York City.

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    Reviews for Never Say Die

    4/5

    33 ratings3 reviews

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    • 4/5
      What a fantastic get-a-hold-of-yourselves-people book. Centered and rational, mature and eloquent, Jacoby gives the best honest assessment of aging that I have not seen anywhere else. "Anywhere else" being mass media, who continues to hawk old age as utopia, less free of infirmities than actual reality. Very impressive in this book as well is that any time research or findings are cited, she puts it in proper context by revealing what salient questions were not asked, what missing data implies, etc. An excellent read that never becomes treacly despite her mention of sad personal experiences.
    • 5/5
      Excellent corrective to the media/advertising blitz encouraging people to think they are going to live forever, or worse, live until 100 and feel like 30 up to that time. Those of us who are 50+ know from our own experiences that the sheer unpredictability of aging mitigates against the idea that ingesting anti-oxidants or other potions will ensure a smooth ride. Those of us with aging parents further understand the profound limitations of reaching 80 and beyond, notwithstanding the very few outliers who beat the odds. Problem is that we all think we will beat the odds. Jacoby is a long overdue wakeup call on that sort of fallacious thinking.
    • 4/5
      Susan Jacoby would have more appropriately titled Never Say Die, her look at aging in America, if she had called it The Worst Years of Our Lives – for that is what she predicts the ninth and tenth decades of life will be for those “fortunate” enough to live very far into them. (I do want to note that she clarifies the purpose of her book with its subtitle: The Myth and Marketing of the New Old Age.) She sees few exceptions (and she attributes most of those to class and money) to the rule: those who reach old old age invariably enter a world impacted more by Alzheimer’s, poverty, family neglect, suicide and assisted suicide, and painful disease than by everything that came before. To Jacoby, this is a given, and there is no room for debate. She believes that those who are blind to this truth have been brainwashed by unscrupulous marketers having some dubious product to sell, some magic pill, cream, liquid, book, or surgery that promises to stop aging in its tracks. As millions of baby boomers reach or approach their 65th birthdays, it is more and more difficult to avoid these hucksters. They are everywhere. We are, after all, easy-sells; we want desperately to believe that the suffering associated with the aging process will be defeated just in time for us to enjoy life well into our nineties, if not beyond. As Jacoby points out, it is not that older people become obsessed by death. Rather, it is that death “becomes a more conscious presence” in their lives as the decades pass. Losing grandparents is somewhat expected and acceptable; losing parents, less so; and losing siblings, old high school friends, and office mates at a steady clip is what finally hits home – we, too, are going to die soon. At sixty-five it is still easy for many of us to believe that the “best years of our lives” are still ahead of us but at eighty-five only “a fool or someone who has led an extraordinarily unhappy life can imagine the best years are still to come.” Never Say Die is a wake-up call, a warning that old age is best handled by preparing oneself for it long before it happens. Jacoby warns of the generational warfare that is likely to erupt when younger workers can no longer afford to finance the medical costs required to keep their elders alive. The difficult choices that have been avoided by politicians for decades will finally have to be made. Those who can afford to save enough to pay their own way in old age need to do just that. Those who cannot, face a much less clear future because it will be up to politicians to figure a way out of the impending mess.It is impossible, of course, to avoid politics in any discussion of health care and caring for a rapidly aging population in the future. Jacoby, however, takes the approach of blaming almost everything bad on conservatives and giving liberals credit for almost everything good. It is only in the book’s last few pages that she effectively dares to criticize the liberal point-of-view at all. Jacoby’s criticism of conservatism often can be justified – but the tone of that criticism, as seen below, often lessens its credibility:“Since we do not euthanize the old when they become too expensive (teabagger fantasies notwithstanding), society winds up paying in the end if government does not require young adults to contribute to the maintenance of a strong public safety net.” (Surely Jacoby understands the sexual connotation of the term “teabagger,” but she chooses to use it anyway.)“While I considered John Paul Stevens the wisest member of the Supreme Court before his retirement at age ninety, I shudder to think about the possibility of Antonin Scalia serving on the Court until his late eighties.” (Agreeing with Jacoby’s political point-of-view earns one a free pass that disagreeing with her politics does not earn.)“Many of these people are former full-time retirees who were victimized by conservative-backed federal policies that enabled companies to break their pension and health care promises to retired workers.” (This issue is not as black and white as Jacoby portrays it.)“The rationally-challenged but cleverly opportunistic fringe was represented by the shameless hustler Sarah Palin, who – blogging away viciously after walking away from her job as governor of Alaska – transformed entirely voluntary consultations into “death panels” that would decide whether old people and children like her son with Down syndrome would continue to receive medical care.” (Here, in her choice of adjectives, Jacoby shows her own irrational hatred of Sarah Palin and the “fringe” she represents.)Never Say Die has some important things to say about medicine, aging, long term care of the elderly, and the hucksters trying to make a fast buck from a generation’s wishful thinking. It is, despite the author’s failure to resist taking a few cheap shots at those who happen to disagree with her, a good addition to the conversation.Rated at: 3.5