Organizing Age provides a broad perspective on the ways in which age is defined in various disciplines and various points in history. By performing a multidisciplinary review, the author has provided information which the reader, and especially students, should find useful for a grounding in the issues of age. Fineman's book provides a service to academics seeking resources to introduce the influence of age into a course of study. For example, this book would be a strong contender as a complementary offering for a social policy course about how society responds to age and how age can influence public policy, addressing specific issues such as the ageing population and retirement/pension reform. The book is not though limited to issues specific to the ageing population, and highlights the treatment of the young and societal responses to cohorts at varied stages. Beneficially, the book fills a literature gap, and it does so in a way which most people would find approachable and at times entertaining, along with its critique of social history and gender roles.

The key strengths of this book are its accessibility and the breadth of views and types of resource used. Attempting to demystify the numerous ways in which age is defined is an impressively ambitious task. In the first chapter especially, the author takes us on a historical journey and we are reminded of the whole host of ways in which age can be revealed: as cohorts, periods, stages, generations, and the like. Through definitions of lifecourse, life stage, and lifespan, the reader is provided with greater clarity. The book is very successful in helping us to traverse these varied concepts, especially when it focuses on generation – a concept which is consistently used and often misinterpreted in ageing and workforce reporting. The chapters traverse an idiosyncratic journey: some sections provide a comprehensive overview of age interpretations, and these are alternated with a spotlight upon particular topics such as retirement; the treatment of youth offenders; the use of child labour; and the concerns related to elder care, in particular dementia. For example, the second chapter introduces us to the subtle ways in which age can infiltrate our working lives, from the way we interpret and establish trust based on youthful versus mature physical attributes, to how we recognise milestones of age and seniority in the workplace. The third chapter tackles the contentious issue of using generational attributes to express how cohorts act and relate to others. This is an essential chapter in that it explains the issues involved in making general assessments of cohorts by an amalgam of experiences including social, political and historical events: it is concerning that the use of generational designations has been freely adopted by media and researchers, when the defining attributes of generations have been based on a particularly American experience. Perhaps a limitation here is that it would have been beneficial to discuss the contrasting arguments about ‘life stage’, including recent suggestions that future organisational focus on the workforce will likely move from generation to life stage (Wong and Sullivan Reference Wong and Sullivan2010).

The second half of the book addresses the numerous facets of ageism, including ageism based on perceptions and physical attributes, and there is a conclusion highlighting future issues in response to an ageing population. These chapters are why this book is so timely. The United Kingdom (UK) has recently dealt with significant changes which impact differentially on particular cohorts. These include the disappearance of the Default Retirement Age; challenges in the higher education systems which are affecting UK youth; pensions woes; and government consultations on flexible employment options applying to all ages of worker. Amongst this there have been the constant reminders that the UK has ageism barriers to overcome and persisting inaccuracies in perceptions of fairness in recessional access to employment and services that include negative views of the young (and old) towards older people. Organizing Age is welcomed as it paves the way for a greater understanding of how we view age and will be valuable in breaking down the barriers of ageism.