No Country for Old Age: America’s War on Aging from Valley Forge to Silicon Valley

Since the birth of their nation, Americans have acted on the belief that theirs was a land of youth, a place destined to offer a fresh start to an aging world. No Country for Old Age tells this story from the founding period to our present moment, but not without exposing its darker side: rejuvenation has often bred grand expectations that end in division and despair.

Mischa Honeck reveals how Americans of diverse backgrounds have sought not only to feel and look younger but also to breathe new life into their communities. Whether marching under the banners of science, public health, sexual liberation, physical fitness, nation-building, or world peace, these youth seekers have tended to paint their ventures in utopian colors. However, from the founders to today’s Silicon Valley elites, anti-aging ventures have repeatedly magnified social inequalities, often projecting visions of society that have been unmistakably classist, racist, misogynist, and ageist. Today we are experiencing rejuvenation’s Janus-faced legacy: As transhumanists rhapsodize about cyber-enhancing human bodies, ghastly pandemics, old-age poverty, and shrinking life expectancies are poised to become the new normal for many twenty-first-century Americans.

Mischa Honeck is professor of North American history at the University of Kassel, Germany.