Pete Croatto

The prospect of middle age, a period with no universally established timeframe, is shrouded in clichéd assumptions. Around age 40, it seems as if Americans are legally required to lose their way. Everyone is a gray hair away from buying sports cars, dumping their spouses or dyeing their hair. Middle age is a years-long punchline, but why? And is there any truth to this unraveling?

More than an exhaustive history, Patricia Cohen’s In Our Prime illuminates an evasive truth: Middle age is an ever-evolving concept. What once was debilitating is now empowering. There are innumerable benefits to being over the hill. “Middle age can bring undiscovered passions, profound satisfactions, and newfound creativity,” Cohen writes. “It is a time of extravagant possibilities.”

The concept of middle age originally developed as a byproduct of the work of Frederick Winslow Taylor, a time management pioneer who “roped modern man to the clock” starting in the 1880s. Taylor’s workplace doctrine of breaking tasks down into individual parts trickled down to “psychologists, educators, and doctors [who] dissected a single life into separate phases: childhood, adolescence, middle, and old age.” Of course, the glittery promise of youth became the most desirable phase, a notion supported by a “burgeoning marketplace [that] was able to exploit the fascination with the body. . . . A cult of youth seized the popular imagination after World War I and has kept a grip on it ever since.”

According to Cohen, the theories and research that freed middle age from its death sentence-like associations didn’t take shape until the 1950s. Researcher Bernice L. Neugarten recalls that in the early 1950s students in her graduate course “were amazed at the idea that no one developed throughout life.” As it turns out, people do evolve over time. The “world’s largest study on middle age,” spearheaded by Bert Brim, dispelled the typical notions of midlife crisis when results were released in 1999. Menopause was no big deal; an empty nest provided parents with independence, not grief.

Things are still not perfect. What Cohen deems the Midlife Industrial Complex is bent on creating conditions for men and women to fix through surgery or cosmetics. But what remains clear throughout Cohen’s fascinating work is that the middle years should be anticipated and savored. In Our Prime will inspire a lot of people to enjoy middle age—and save countless trips to Porsche dealerships.

When a series of anthrax-filled letters appeared in the U.S. right after the unimaginable tragedy of September 11, the powers that be were misinformed and easily swayed. In American Anthrax, noted anthrax expert Jeanne Guillemin takes a step back and examines the personal problems and bureaucratic missteps lost in the cloud of fear and panic. It’s a riveting—and sometimes frightening—read.

Guillemin expresses her key points simply, allowing for a grimacing page-turner. Decision-makers were in foreign territory. For example, after anthrax was first reported at the Brentwood postal facility in Washington, D.C., the building remained open for days. Employee weren’t tested for anthrax until October 18, a week after the suspicious letter arrived. As the concern over biological warfare mounted, the federal government pushed for mass smallpox vaccination, even though the Dryvax vaccine had serious side effects. There was widespread misunderstanding over how much anthrax was harmful and the origin of the material inside the letters.

Regarding the latter, key experts convinced influential figures that the anthrax was from a foreign source, a completely false assertion. Both parties got what they wanted: Along with unlikely doomsday scenarios, the U.S. got an excuse to invade Iraq. And civilian biodefense research and development became a profitable business, as its federal budget line surged from $271 million in 2001 to $3.74 billion in 2003.

Meanwhile, Bruce Ivins, a microbiologist at the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, became the FBI’s top suspect behind the fatal letters. But it took years for investigators to zero in on him, mainly because testing methods had to improve and too many people overlooked Ivins’ bizarre pattern of behavior.

There was no satisfying resolution to the anthrax scare. Ivins committed suicide in 2008, before any suspicions could be confirmed in court, and the government’s approach to bioterrorism, Guillemin says, remains misguided. It’s still “fixated on the idea of foreign bioterrorism—almost as if no greater threat to national health exists,” which stops us from seeking “more positive policies.” Guillemin’s wonderful book provides some clarity so that we can avoid making the same mistakes twice. After all, the room for error fits inside a casket.