This Old World

New York Times Book Review

I thought of my grandfather often as I read Ted C. Fishman’s “Shock of Gray,” because his circumstances illustrate one of the book’s central arguments: aging accelerates globalization. As science allows us to live longer and we choose to have fewer children, we will increasingly rely on the more affordable labor of foreigners.

If Fishman’s point seems empirically obvious, the observations he makes about it are far-reaching and highly relevant to the current debate about the American economy. “Shock of Gray” grew out of the research for Fishman’s first book, “China, Inc.: How the Rise of the Next Superpower Challenges America and the World,” and the two books share a fast pace, global scope and jaw-dropping facts.

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