Book review: ‘Shock of Gray’ by Ted C. Fishman

From the LA Times

Not long ago, I spoke with Dr. David Reuben, a colleague who heads a top-ranked geriatrics program. After touching on current healthcare dilemmas, our conversation moved to the future. Specifically, how to cope as baby boomers sail past birthdays that their grandparents never dreamed of reaching.

“What lies ahead when the age wave really hits?” I asked him. “You know, when every state looks like Florida?”

“Another Hurricane Katrina,” he shot back. “But by then, will we have working dams and dikes? Or levees that overflow?”

Ted C. Fishman — business reporter, mercantile trader and author — may have a different day job than my colleague, but the two are kindred spirits. The key message in “Shock of Gray,” Fishman’s sprawling, fact-filled preview of a “historically enormous older population,” is this: We are ill-prepared for the coming storm. Oh, and one more thing: Most of us barely grasp how much the world has already changed.

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