Younger Next Year: A Guide to Living Like 50 Until You're 80 and Beyond » (Abridged)

Chris Crowley, 73, is a former litigator (Davis Polk & Wardwell) who retired in 1990 to ski, sail, bike, play tennis, cook, write these books, and take his passion for them on the road.

Henry S. Lodge, M.D., 49, a board-certified internist, is listed variously as “One of the Best Doctors in New York/America/the World.” He heads a 23-doctor practice in Manhattan and is a member of the clinical faculty at Columbia Medical School. Both authors are contributing experts to HealthCentral.com. They live in New York City.

YOUNGER NEXT YEAR draws on the very latest science of aging to show how men 50 or older can become functionally younger every year for the next five to ten years, and continue to live like fifty-year-olds until well into their eighties. To enjoy life and be stronger, healthier, and more alert. To stave off 70% of the normal decay associated with aging (weakness, sore joints, apathy). and to eliminate over 50% of all illness and potential injuries. This is the real thing, a program that will work for anyone who decides to apply himself to "Harry's Rules."

Harry is Henry S. Lodge, M.D., a specialist in internal medicine and preventive healthcare. Chris Crowley is Harry's 70-year-old patient who's stronger today (and skiing better) than when he was 40. Together, in alternating chapters that are lively, sometimes outspoken, and always utterly convincing, they spell out Harry's Rules and the science behind them. The rules are deceptively simple: Exercise Six Days a Week, Eat What You Know You Should, Connect to Other People and Commit to Feeling Passionate About Something. The science, simplified and demystified, ranges from molecular biology of growth and decay to how our bodies and minds evolved (and why they fare so poorly in our sedentary, all-feast, no-famine culture). The result is nothing less than a paradigm shift in our view of aging.

Publishers Weekly

Believing they have a unique approach for improving men's lives, Crowley, a former litigator, and Lodge, a board-certified internist, collaborated to write this "evolutionary" health program. The authors base their plan on the idea that instead of looking forward to decades of pain as the body slowly deteriorates, it's possible to live as if you were 50, maybe even younger, for the rest of your life. Yet with the exception of "Harry's First Rule"-exercise at least six days a week-there isn't much that's new or groundbreaking in their agenda. Most recommendations fall under the "common sense" umbrella, though these suggestions may be news to many men, who aren't as steeped in the world of health and fitness as most women are (they may find the chapters dealing with nutrition and biology particularly informative). The authors' method of proffering their philosophy is rather trite, however, and their cavalier demeanor belies the significance of what they have to say. More than one-third of the book is devoted to how and why they came up with this program based on their own lives, with special attention to 70-year-old Crowley's impressive abilities (he says he can ski better now than he could 20 years ago). All told, this manual for healthy living offers sound, if unoriginal, advice with some hackneyed padding. (Jan.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.