Chappel delves into statistics and academic conferences more than he does the psychology of old age, which he can’t quite bring to life. He’s what you’d call a big-picture guy, writing about a subject whose pathos is all in the close-ups. Even so, there’s a profound loneliness skulking around his book.
A lucid, comprehensive examination of a complex issue, and readers can be excused if, by the time they’ve turned the last of the book’s fact-and-analysis-crammed pages, they feel as if they’ve aged a few years ... The reader finishes Golden Years with a fuller understanding of all the nettlesome issues involved in the aging of America—and a fresh awareness of one’s own mortality.
This is sober history, in the sense that it is no fun at all to read. Golden Years is related in baked-potato, hold-the-butter-and-salt prose. While reading it I felt my life slipping away more rapidly than usual ... Chappel makes me want to revisit The Golden Girls. But I wish his book had taken us closer to the present day
Chappel...wears his erudition lightly. Writing in clear, accessible prose, he surveys a century’s worth of evolving understandings and experiences of old age in America ... One of the strengths of Golden Years is its wide scope. But that broad brush means that Chappel doesn’t always dive deep.
Compelling, informative ... Sometimes dense, but it’s worth the effort. Chappel offers a thought-provoking glimpse of how America has tried to imagine the needs and value of an aging population in the past, and how it might best understand and deal with a graying populace.
