I wrote about or featured this title on my blog and will provide the details directly to the publisher in the next round of this review process.

A fascinating read for any non-fiction lover. Larger scientific concepts made accessible with the care and enthusiasm of a teacher eager to educate.

Over the past two years Longevity, Bio-gerontology, or Life Extension has been a pet subject of mine and during that time I have read over 15 books on different aspects of this topic. With that background I can honestly say that Ageless by Andrew Steele is one of the top books on the subject.

What Ageless does exceptionally well over other books in the topic is being able to convey the sometimes complex biology of aging research in a simple, yet detailed, and more importantly readable and entertaining way. Many books are able to provide detail however they come across as dense and academic so they are not accessible to the standard reader. Others are entertaining but you come away from the book with only a taste of the current situation as only portions of the science are explored. This book strikes the balance between these two positions perfectly.

If you are interested in a no-bs, not overly-optimistic look at the current science of a new emerging field this should be high on your list.

An information-filled book with medical details written clearly enough for a layperson. This is a highly popular topic too--many people want to know all about living longer.

This is a fascinating book for fellow science geeks, but it's not a book on how the reader is necessarily going to avoid aging. Steele is a scientist who takes us on a deep dive into the 9 reasons he says we age. He maintains that aging is not required and that if we can manipulate cells enough, it may be possible for people to never age in the future. That's the thing though, this is all futuristic stuff. It's all cell manipulation and promising technology. It is quite interesting, but I'm not even sure that I agree with him that our governments should be funding this research, as I really think it would end up being one more area where the rich benefited and life got even harder for the poor.

The very end of the book tells how to live a little longer in the meantime in order to hopefully extend your life enough to live in times when they can extend it more and then more. These are absolutely basic things we all know -- stop smoking, exercise, get sleep, etc. He says not to take supplements (even vitamins). The last one is "be born a woman."

I was surprised that Steele didn't go into other things we do know help extend life, like social contact. He also talked a lot about the length of telomeres and how that translates to life expectancy, but never mentions things like the fact that they've shown that growing up in an abusive home and other sources of stress actually shorten telomeres.

Then there's the giddy fascination he has with all the scientists who sew mice together to study how that affects them (for instance, sewing a young mouse to an older one to see if the old one benefits from sharing cells and such). He actually uses the word "shockingly" when he says this research mostly stopped 30 years ago, but then he happily tells us that a married couple of scientists have started doing it again. Then he tells us about the experiments they're doing on King Charles spaniels in order to try to develop anti-aging technology to sell to dog owners (apparently this breed ages quickly). He sees this all as wonderful science. I just felt sad.

It is an interesting book for those who just love learning. I found it very interesting, but not actually helpful on a personal level.

I read a digital ARC of this book via Net Galley.

This was an engaging popular science book, and I'd recommend for general non-fiction readers who want to learn more about the process of aging and the latest research on slowing it down (an eternally interesting subject to most humans in my experience!).