The New Math of Old Age

A more empathetic Tracey Jackson finally emerges in the book’s penultimate chapter, where she describes how boomers feel when one of their icons dies — political journalist Tim Russert, for example, or movie director John Hughes. Not to mention their own friends and acquaintances: “[N]o matter how many ways you try to distance yourself from it,” she writes, “it still scares the [sh*t] out of you.”

There’s death talk aplenty in these pages, yet Jackson never turns maudlin. “We may not be thirty when we’re fifty, or forty when we’re sixty,” she concludes, “but we can be the best version of where we are at any given time.”

To which one can only say, “You go, girl!” Only next time, go with a less-abrasive ’tude.

Boomer Evelyn Renold is a writer and editor who lives in New York.