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More About

• Susan Jacoby
• George Burns
• Center for Inquiry-New York City

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Famous centenarian George Burns once said: “You know you’re getting old when you stoop to tie your shoes and wonder what else you can do while you’re down there.” But dwelling on the limitations of getting old just won’t do anymore. A new era has dawned, dubbed the new old age. Watch any commercial during the nightly news. The silver-haired are sexually virulent and spry, the women sport faces stretched taut ear-to-ear, and the men are still sweaty from their last triathlon. What is this, Cocoon? Author Susan Jacoby is fed up with the marketing machine dishing out the myth of young old age. In her latest book, Never Say Die, she critiques the treating of age as a cold to be cured instead of an inevitable stage of life. Jacoby is a former reporter for the Washington Post and program director of the Center for Inquiry-New York City, a rationalist think tank. Her recent The Age of American Unreason, which decried our country’s spiraling descent into ignorance, was a New York Timesbestseller. Jacoby will talk about the right to age ungracefully at Books & Books this Wednesday.
Wed., Feb. 9, 8 p.m., 2011