In the tradition of Atul Gawande and Sherwin Nuland, Marc Agronin writes luminously and unforgettably of life as he sees it as a doctor. His beat is a nursing home in Miami that some would dismiss as "God’s waiting room. ” Nothing in the young doctor’s medical training had quite prepared him for what he was to discover there. As Agronin first learned from ninety-eight-year-old Esther and, later, from countless others, the true scales of aging aren’t one-sided-you can’t list the problems without also tallying the hopes and promises. Drawing on moving personal experiences and in-depth interviews with pioneers in the field, Agronin conjures a spellbinding look at what aging means today-how our bodies and brains age, and the very way we understand aging.