SUMMARYThe first half of this book reviews what aging is like for most people including their health status and the help they receive from family and friends. The second half focuses on the formal health care system and the adequacy of it. The book is well-written and has a number of strengths, the outstanding one being the numerous references to Canadian research. The book also has weaknesses. It compares and contrasts the health care systems of Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom, but does this so briefly that the significant differences within each of these systems are lost. The book criticizes the Canadian health care system for being “over medicalized” to the detriment of the care of older people. This point is emphasized to the extent that it comes across as strong anti-physician bias. The authors emphasize the need for a range of community services to offset the need or both acute and long-term institutional care. They provide helpful descriptions of many such services, for example, adult day care and respite care, but fail to deal with the problem of lack of articulation among the various levels of care. For individuals new to the field of aging, the book provides an excellent introduction to key concepts and research findings. For the more experienced practitioners and academics, it provides useful references and discussion of recent studies.
