Anthropology in Action, 24, no. 1 (Spring 2017): 49–50 © Berghahn Books and the Association for Anthropology in Action ISSN 0967-201X (Print) ISSN 1752-2285 (Online) doi:10.3167/aia.2017.240108 Reviews Aging and the Digital Life Course David Prendergast and Chiara Garatini (eds), New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2015, ISBN: 798-1-78238-691-9, 289pp., Hb. £80.00 Reviewed by Henglien Lisa Chen  Part of the series: To See Ourselves as Others See Us: Reviews of Anthropological Works by Non-Anthropologists Aging and the Digital Life Course provides an interest- ing and ofen thought-provoking read. Part 1 covers technologically mediated ways of connecting and interacting with people. In Part 2, a potpourri of top- ics is explained by reference to technologies that sup- port a healthy lifestyle and wellbeing. These include reports of empirical studies (assistive technology in self-management and behavioural change, living well with dementia and hands-on tech care) along- side theoretical and conceptual analysis and discus- sion (co-designed technology with older people and the process of normalisation and system-level change in home telehealth). This part, for this gerontological social work reader, was much the most compelling section overall. Part 3 is given over to four original chapters on life-course transition for caregivers, retir- ees, older migrants and older gamers and addresses digital traces at the end of the life course and beyond. Overall, the book includes a mix of up-to-date internationally funded research and commentaries on developments in core digital technology and ser- vice fields in ageing and ageing care with more spe- cific, issue-based, chapters, such as combating social isolation (Singh; Wherton et al.) and dementia care (Neven and Leeson; Astell). The editors have suc- ceeded in assembling an engaging and effective compilation from amidst the range of material that might have been included. The authors write clearly and accessibly about their subjects, allowing a wide range of readers (e.g. policymakers, practitioners and academics in engineering, health and social care) to get quickly to grips with a huge diversity of facts and concepts. They include an international group of research students, practitioners and campaigners, whose work is as fluent and coherent as the more familiar academic names. However, the absence of authorship grounded in what is now sometimes called ‘expertise from experience’, rather than in academic study alone, seems a litle odd given the paradigmatic shif in digital, social and healthcare policy as a discipline and practice (e.g. client-centred and patient-centred in social- and healthcare respec- tively) towards the revalorisation of the users. The chapters are factually well-informed and also theoretically articulated, although some stand out. The life-course transition discourse in Part 3 is arguably more uneven in breadth of description and depth of analysis because of the very wide fields some authors are atempting to cover. The most suc- cessful – notably Singh’s ‘life course’ analysis and López and Sánchez-Criado’s ‘hands-on-tech care’ – combine an immediacy and freshness in capturing the particular dynamic of contemporary ageing is- sues and strategies with a depth of understanding and a grasp of the wider historical, political or or- ganisational significance of contemporary conjunc- tions. In Part 2, the health and wellbeing chapters are particularly effective because they not only provide an excellent complementary set of accounts that link wider debates about conceptual frameworks in re- search into digital care for older people but also make excellent use of ethnographic evidence to con- tribute to the knowledge base. Overall, the book successfully challenges the ste- reotypical perception of older people’s incapability of engaging with technology. It shows, through critical thinking and demonstration, how either healthy or frail older people could develop resilience in adopt- ing digital and technologically mediated ways to develop their normality and to maintain or improve their quality of life. Furthermore, the book provides some exemplary anthropological approaches to bio- graphical interviews and observation which care prac- titioners and researchers could learn from in order to gain a more holistic understanding of older people and their families and, most importantly, to work