Spring Chicken

  Mukherjee, Siddhartha. The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer. 1st Scribner hardcover ed. New York: Scribner, 2010.

  Nuland, Sherwin B. The Art of Aging: A Doctor’s Prescription for Well-Being. 1st ed. New York: Random House, 2007.

  Oeppen, J., and J. W. Vaupel. “Demography. Broken Limits to Life Expectancy.” Science 296, no. 5570 (May 10, 2002): 1029-31.

  Olshansky, Stuart Jay, and Bruce A. Carnes. The Quest for Immortality: Science at the Frontiers of Aging. New York: Norton, 2001.

  Poynter, Jane. The Human Experiment: Two Years and Twenty Minutes Inside Biosphere 2. New York, Berkeley, CA: Thunder’s Mouth Press; Distributed by Publishers Group West, 2006.

  Ridley, Matt. Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters. 1st U.S. ed. New York: HarperCollins, 1999.

  Shock, Nathan W., and Gerontology Research Center (U.S.). Normal Human Aging: The Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging. NIH Publication. Baltimore, Md.; Washington, D.C.: U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, National Institutes of Health, National Institute on Aging. For sale by the Supt. of Docs., U.S. G.P.O., 1984.

  Shteyngart, Gary. Super Sad True Love Story: A Novel. 1st ed. New York: Random House, 2010.

  Snowdon, David. Aging with Grace: What the Nun Study Teaches Us About Leading Longer, Healthier, and More Meaningful Lives. New York: Bantam Books, 2001.

  Stipp, David. The Youth Pill: Scientists at the Brink of an Anti-Aging Revolution. New York: Current, 2010.

  Taubes, Gary. Good Calories, Bad Calories: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom on Diet, Weight Control, and Disease. 1st ed. New York: Knopf, 2007.

  ———. Why We Get Fat and What to Do About It. 1st ed. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011.

  Teicholz, Nina. The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat, and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet. 1st Simon & Schuster hardcover ed. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014.

  Varady, Krista. The Every-Other-Day Diet: The Diet That Lets You Eat All You Want (Half the Time) and Keep the Weight Off. 1st ed. New York: Hyperion, 2013.

  Weinberger, Eliot. Karmic Traces, 1993-1999. New Directions Paperbook. New York: New Directions Books, 2000.

  Weiner, Jonathan. Long for This World: The Strange Science of Immortality. 1st ed. New York: Ecco, 2010.

  Weintraub, Arlene. Selling the Fountain of Youth: How the Anti-Aging Industry Made a Disease out of Getting Old, and Made Billions. New York: Basic Books, 2010.

  Whitehouse, Peter J., and Daniel George. The Myth of Alzheimer’s: What You Aren’t Being Told About Today’s Most Dreaded Diagnosis. 1st ed. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2008.

  * And who happens to be—huzzah!—an ancestor of mine.

  * My brother the corporate lawyer has been appointed to do the deed, if it ever comes to that.

  Thank you for buying this ebook, published by Hachette Digital.

  To receive special offers, bonus content, and news about our latest ebooks and apps, sign up for our newsletters.

  Sign Up

  Or visit us at hachettebookgroup.com/newsletters

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Welcome

  Epigraph

  Dedication

  Prologue: The Elixir

  Chapter 1: Brothers

  Chapter 2: The Age of Aging

  Chapter 3: The Fountain of Youthiness

  Chapter 4: Yours Sincerely, Wasting Away

  Chapter 5: How to Live to 108 Without Really Trying

  Chapter 6: The Heart of the Problem

  Chapter 7: Baldness as Metaphor

  Chapter 8: The Lives of Our Cells

  Chapter 9: Phil vs. Fat

  Chapter 10: Pole Vaulting into Eternity

  Chapter 11: Starving for Immortality

  Chapter 12: What Doesn’t Kill You

  Chapter 13: Fast Forward

  Chapter 14: Who Moved My Keys?

  Epilogue: The Death of Death

  Acknowledgments

  Appendix: Things That Might Work

  Notes & Sources

  Further Reading

  Newsletters

  Copyright

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2015 by Bill Gifford

  Illustrations © 2015 by Oliver Munday

  Cover design and lettering by Oliver Munday

  Cover copyright © 2015 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  Grand Central Publishing

  Hachette Book Group

  1290 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10104

  hachettebookgroup.com

  twitter.com/grandcentralpub

  First ebook edition: February 2015

  Grand Central Publishing is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The Grand Central Publishing name and logo is a trademark of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The Hachette Speakers Bureau provides a wide range of authors for speaking events. To find out more, go to www.hachettespeakersbureau.com or call (866) 376-6591.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  ISBN 978-1-4555-2745-8

  E3