MixedThe New RepublicIt is a safe bet that the AARP will not be promoting Gerontocracy in America to its 38 million members. Its depiction of the great aging as an orgy of elder egotism is so dark that it casts a shadow on the very medical advances that enabled it ... For Moyn, returning the country to a state of vigor and dynamism requires questioning every widely held assumption about aging, life extension, and death ... We can only learn so much from a book that understands and scolds the old as fundamentally a housing and labor problem.
PositiveThe New RepublicA just and overdue accounting ... The book is an investigative demolition job in the best tradition of muckraking exposés and should find a sizable and receptive audience at a moment when public sentiment toward our corporate health care system ranges between Ralph Nader and Luigi Mangione ... Harris could have written an entire book about the story of Baby Powder, and No More Tears would still warrant an honorable mention among notable recent narrative investigations at the intersection of corporate perfidy and public health ... Harris ably covers the famous tampering scandal of 1982, in which several people in Illinois died after consuming Tylenol deliberately contaminated with cyanide ... Given the depths of his disillusionment, Harris ends on a confused note that suggests his education remains incomplete ... Rather than extend the implications of his reporting to a system critique, Harris closes with a bizarre attempt at evenhandedness that lauds Johnson & Johnson for developing Bedaquiline, a tuberculosis drug.
