Defy Aging: A Beginner’s Guide to the New Science of Longer Life and Better Health

Geneticist Bennett lends a scientist’s scrutiny to this accessible and comprehensive “guidebook to the aging of the body.” Rather than advise on ways to slow down aging, Bennett focuses on the mechanics of getting older, with chapters exploring how individual bodily systems—the skin, muscles, skeleton, cardiovascular system, and brain—are affected by aging, such as how skin loses tautness or why blood vessels eventually stiffen. In the final two chapters, Bennett lays out behavioral and chemical interventions with promising antiaging potential (among them restricting calories, fasting diets, and heat and cold exposure therapies), concluding that “although dying is inevitable, poor health, by and large, is not.” Bennett also expounds on particularly complex topics in “deep dive” sections, and proposes that the reader “treat the book like a smorgasbord of aging information, picking and choosing topics that interest you.” (For instance, “A Deep Dive into the Protein Structure of the Skin” explains how cancer risk and skin care go hand in hand.) Bennett synthesizes mountains of research, carefully weighing the reliability of the available data and explaining dense content with clarity, but, even so, casual readers may have trouble keeping up with the extensive technical explanations. This explainer packs in a wealth of contemporary insight into an ancient topic. (Nov.)