Quick Reads: “Spring Chicken” by Bill Gifford


Spring Chicken

By Bill Gifford

GRAND CENTRAL

You’ve got to be a tad loony to think you can defy death, and so it is with Bill Gifford’s cast of anti-aging researchers and obsessives, whose strategies range from testosterone shots to self-starvation. But nothing seems to beat sheer will: People who thrive with age—take the 75-year-old woman who runs a sub-seven-minute mile—don’t get there with magic pills, hormones, or even red wine. What they do is move around like crazy—”use it or lose it,” Gifford explains. In one chapter, he introduces us to Okinawa, home to the world’s highest concentration of centenarians, who’ve discovered the best longevity method of all: ikigai, a reason to get up in the morning.


If you buy a book using our Bookshop link, a small share of the proceeds supports our journalism.

BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And the essential ingredient that makes all this possible? Readers like you.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to devote the time and resources to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And the essential ingredient that makes all this possible? Readers like you.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to devote the time and resources to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate