Erfullt leben - in Gelessanheit sterben Geschichte und Gegenwart.

This volume contains papers discussing the increased expectancy of life at birth which occurred in European societies after 1600. It addresses to two principal audiences - the educated general public and scholars whose research treats themes relevant to this "longevity revolution." To the first audience, it offers an informed celebration of increased lifespans tempered by the message that individuals need to learn how to properly use the greater and more predictable span of life. To the second audience, the contributors call for interdisciplinary studies as a way to communicate research results on this topic to the general public.

Demographers, historical demographers, and epidemiologists establish the "hard facts" of the "longevity revolution." Data from Japan, Scandinavia, and a comparison of the two Germanies show how life expectancy at birth doubled in westernized societies in the last three centuries. Reduction of infant and child mortality, diminution of accidental deaths among males aged 18-25, and finally a reduction in mortality among women associated with childbearing all played a role in this remarkable change. Of these factors, the first is thought to be the most important and influenced primarily by improved nutritional circumstances. Medical and public health intervention become more important in reducing mortality after infancy and later in the process of development. As a result, far more people now live to the end of a "natural" life span of 85 years and many beyond. Women have done better than men.

These "hard facts" occasion significant new difficulties for society. A long life doesn't mean a healthy or happy life. Morbidity statistics show the increased importance of degenerative disease and deaths from multiple system failures. More importantly these deaths occur away from home in hospitals requiring that over half of lifetime health expenditures comes in the last six months of life. A significantly older population with fewer contributing to health care costs evokes considerable worry in government, insurance, and medical circles. Elevated suicide rates among the elderly suggest that even they do not see long life as entirely beneficial.

Papers by philosophers, historians, medical ethicists, and theologians address the problems of adjustment to the new circumstances. Arthur Imhof uses Dutch landscape and portrait artists in demonstrating that people of the seventeenth-century Netherlands were able to live a full life and even die in peace despite the unpredictability and omnipresence of death in their lives. Now, however, most contributors believe people have became increasingly uncomfortable with death. Human mortality is denied, hidden, and has ceased to be a part of everyday living. Such difficulties are intensified because the Christian vision of an eternal life after death is no longer convincing to many.

Several contributors issue the call to learn to die and to live through careful construction of a "lifeplan" which not only addresses financial and health care needs but also the need to fill a long leisured period after one's family and work obligations have come to an end. Vedic texts presented by Chandrabhal Tripathi provide a model of a later life devoted to study, books, travel, and the cultivation of the life of the mind and the spirit. As an example of such a reflective exercise, Imhof offers his own feuilleton-like study of pomegranate motifs in Renaissance art. Imhof argues that such motifs represented the reception and reconfiguration of non-western ideas by Europeans. Such cross-cultural openness he argues can be a key to the full life and the peaceful death.

Readers used to difficult German academic language will be surprised to find relatively little of it in this volume. Contributors sought accessibility to the general public and to specialists outside their discipline. Moreover, publishers, talk show hosts, and other the media contributed criticism of the inaccessibility of scientific communication. On another level there are several presentations devoted to explaining the workings of institutionally organized plural disciplinary research groups including an entire university in Linkoping, Sweden.

Though I find this enterprise in general both exciting and promising, it is necessary to express some reservations. The first problem is endemic to interdisciplinary studies - given the increasing specialization of academic work, who is qualified to judge volumes like this one where the range across disciplines is staggering? Secondly, the clearest examples of interdisciplinary work were those of the editor, Arthur Imhof, while most others remained discipline-bound. His closing piece on pomegranate motifs in Renaissance art stands as a good example of what might be done with interdisciplinary studies. However, in his piece on Dutch landscape and portrait painters the historical demographer Imhof takes sides on questions being debated by art historians. Here his approach looks too much like poaching and may not encourage cooperation among the disciplines. Finally, it struck this reader as incredible that we hear so little of the actual experience of the aged in these times. Nevertheless, this collection remains an important challenge.

Peter K. Taylor Rosary College