Book Review: The Evening of Life: The Challenges of Aging and Dying Well

Abstract

The Evening of Life: The Challenges of Aging and Dying Well is a collection edited by Joseph E. Davis and Paul Scherz that seeks to highlight philosophical and ethical issues surrounding older adulthood at the microand macro-levels while simultaneously detailing prevailing culture and subsequent consequences related to ageism in the United States (U.S.). To do so, the editors have offered a timely, carefully curated portfolio of writings, distinct yet interrelated, constructed by scholars, practitioners, and advocates. The Evening of Life reads with buttery smoothness, and though an edited volume, voices complement rather than clash across chapters. Bookended with introduction and conclusion chapters that prepare and then synthesize the varied authors’ contributions, the text reads with ease and grace. The text is divided into three parts. The first, “Our Deficit Model of Aging,” includes three chapters that paint with gritty texture the foundations and consequences of the death-defying beliefs, values, and norms held so tightly in U.S. society. To begin, the fiscal crises associated with a shifting demography alongside the medicalization and commercialization of aging are described. “Successful aging” is discussed in the context of socioeconomic and demographic disparities—our culture’s adherence to an individualistic and liberalistic dogma means that many who do not thrive have done so on their own accord, leaving some populations at particular risk of isolation, morbidity, and early mortality. Related and further compounding these challenges and associated sequelae, the field of evidence-making has called into question decisions of older adults that go “against the grain”—using the implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) as an example, Kaufman details how the dying transition is ever-prolonged by modern medicine, tangling patients and loved ones in ethical conflicts regarding “how one can or should live in relation to OMEGA—Journal of Death and Dying