In this book, the first of two volumes, the editors, co-editors and chapter authors offer insights into population ageing in Australia, Israel and the United States, as these countries respond to various societal issues they face in the 21st century. The authors address how people are coping with growing older; how these nations and their citizens are adapting to health changes that accompany ageing, and how these societies are ‘making a place for older persons’. The book serves well as an informative snapshot, particularly for policy making.

I applaud the use of geo-political contexts (the three nations) for considering societal similarities and differences about some issues and trends in our increasingly global times. For students, the book will be useful for its attention to such issues as creativity in adapting to later-life changes; resilience in widowhood; help seeking for health changes; and the diversity of healthy-ageing experiences in terms of migration. The latter is particularly helpful for appreciating the heterogeneity of later-life experiences given the globalisation of the 21st century. For example, by teasing apart the variety of older adults' experiences and how ‘voluntary immigration’ (p. 104) and/or being a ‘veteran resident’ (p. 117) might affect how people make sense of later-life health changes, we begin to learn how various societies are responding to this heterogeneity. The glossary astutely helps readers in different countries to understand terms used locally, particularly regarding policy issues.

Based on the title and Prologue, it was expected that the book would be structured by case studies in a cross-country comparative analysis, and therefore anticipated that each chapter would focus in depth on a particular group of people, in a particular place and at a particular time. As I read, however, I came to appreciate that the cases were broadly conceptualised as nations of people. I also looked forward to an integrating thread that would help to link the shared and unique experiences of these three ageing societies. Being from Canada, I anticipated material on the socio-cultural and political-economic factors that accompany ageing in other multicultural societies. Some such linking is offered in the Prologue, each section's Introduction and the Epilogue, but more often than not, the various contributors focus on their own nations and do no more than identify the need for such comparative work.

As a researcher interested in the concept of ‘ageing well’, I noticed that the various authors used that term interchangeably with ‘healthy ageing’, ‘successful ageing’, ‘positive ageing’, ‘optimal ageing’ and ‘creative ageing’. Language has a marvellous way of reflecting writers' assumptions and the character of their thinking. Some of these terms reveal a rather prescriptive approach to human ageing, pointing to how individuals and societies ‘should’ and ‘must’ age to survive. Yet following 60 years of gerontological theories about this process of how to age, I was surprised that the authors as a whole were not more focused on studying it as a process experienced in a multiple ways.

This leads to an associated concern. The third section of the book draws on a familiar discourse from 1999, the United Nations' International Year of Older Persons, with such objectives as ‘making a place for older persons in society’. Taking a critical theory perspective in 2007, I wonder now how we could have assumed a singularity of place for older adults leading up to 1999. In critical gerontology, I believe that we increasingly assume that contemporary societies are characterised by heterogeneity. To come upon assumptions of homogeneity in the book, such as the references to ‘the older adult's role’, ‘the aging process’ and ‘the modern family’ was surprising (pp. 124 and 126). I was also dismayed to find a few uses of ‘man’, ‘him’ and even ‘her’ (pp. 7–8) when third-person plural pronouns have become a convention for referring to humanity. In addition, in the mid-2000s with a growing awareness of apocalyptic demography (Gee and Gutman Reference Gee and Gutman2000), I was disconcerted by the tendency to conceptualise ageing as a social problem to be solved, prescribed or consumed away. In response, I encourage others to read this book with an historical context in mind; situated in time, this book can be helpful for appreciating how gerontological discourse, like any social construction, changes over time. I recommend this book for its descriptive content, particularly for new readers in gerontology and those with an interest in public policy. The book offers insights into the changing state of understanding what is working and what needs to be added in policy in each of these three nations to support healthy ageing.