Generational Intelligence: A Critical Approach to Age Relations concerns communication among generations. The book’s main goal, say the authors, is to offer a new conceptual framework for understanding intergenerational relations. Biggs and Lowenstein see a paradigm shift taking place in relations between generations whereby families are less bound by duty and more involved in negotiated relationships. The authors set out, in 11 short chapters, to detail the key issues and contradictions in changing generational relations, and to chart a path that views generation as something both experienced “all at one go” yet simultaneously not directly accessible to experience. These authors have no aversion to contradiction, but indeed mine it for insights.

Generational intelligence, as explicated in chapter 1, straddles the dual challenge of placing oneself in the situation of another generation, and negotiating sustainable relations among generations, both of which occur against the backdrop of shifting socio-demographic trends. The concept widely opens the door for viewing both contemporary social issues and their potential solutions. Chapters 3 and 4 target generational self-awareness, focussing first on how we become generationally aware and encouraging a kind of self-mindfulness about age and aging as both a result of social location and process, and second, focussing on how self-awareness of intergenerational relations can take various paths.

Chapters 5 and 6 reveal how generational self-awareness moves from egocentric to interactive, a process that involves building generational empathy and intergenerational bridges. Ageism is seen by the authors as “the troll that waits to jump out and scare the younger generation away ...” (p. 45). Further, it is argued that ageism gives dominance to middle and younger generations’ priorities and interests. In “Generational Strategies and Negotiation” (chapter 5), the concept of social mask, which had been developed earlier by Carl Jung, is amplified into a masquerade that disguises socially damaging aspects of aging that nonetheless are revealing of old age. Such a masquerade can be disquieting as, for example, when the aging body is seen as a cage from which the younger self-identity cannot escape. But, suggest Biggs and Lowenstein, masquerade can also be a liminal space between personal identity and social appearance, a bridge between inner and outer worlds. In this sense, masquerading can provide a means of negotiating identity between people of different ages, as the older person becomes an active agent in the intergenerational environment.

Part 2 of the book includes five chapters on social institutional settings describing how generational intelligence can usefully play out in (a) families, (b) caregiving, (c) elder mistreatment, (d) the workplace, and (e) communities at large. The focus on families is not confined to relations among family members, but also on the need for interrogating the public sphere, to examine how policies fit with the new culture of productive aging, and with everyday experiences of intergenerational family relations as negotiated rather than bound by duty. Caregiving is seen as an arena where challenges exist and where negotiations are increasingly required as more generations coexist, possibly in need of simultaneous care. In this arena, generational intelligence can contribute to enhanced empathy going both directions (i.e., to and from caregiver to care recipient), as well as in negotiating solutions, both familial and non-familial, to care requirements.

Elder mistreatment is explored within the generational intelligence framework to reveal that, without a clear understanding of cohort realities and expectations as well as significant moves beyond cohort labels and stereotypes, abuse can be the “unthought” response. Ageism in the workplace and community is similarly a collective “unthought” response to the basics of generational intelligence, that is, acknowledging the value and usefulness of reciprocal relations among generations.

The concluding chapter asks how good generational relations can be sustained in a time of unprecedented socio-demographic change. Unlike in many other sociological approaches, Biggs and Lowenstein see positive change in generational relations starting with enhanced self-awareness amidst an unceasing flow of generationed images, and socio-economic models that foster generational competition. This chapter, however, is the least satisfying in the book. It leaves the reader somewhat confused but begging for more.

That said, Generational Intelligence is not only an intellectual tour de force bringing together contemporary trends and challenges with a new framing concept, it is highly engaging and generally readable. It has a clear voice throughout with a sharply articulated message, even though that message might have been expressed more clearly and completely in the concluding chapter. The book primarily makes a theoretical or conceptual contribution with considerable possibility for personal and societal application, although with a little less application to policy. It is a book that could be of interest to many scholars in gerontology, social work, sociology, and psychology, and could be used as a supplemental text in upper-level courses in these fields. It is also of interest to researchers struggling to frame longitudinal research with an intergenerational lens.