The Case Against (Most) Books
20th October 2025
Ideally, one would like to think that if someone has written a 300-page book, it means that they have 300 pages worth of things to say. My experience is that is rarely the case. People generally have an idea that can be expressed in terms much shorter than that, but extending your idea into a book looks impressive on a CV and gets you invited on TV shows and podcasts.
To take one example, the last book I finished was David Sinclair’s Lifespan. It has three parts, and the last of them is nothing but two chapters about his political and social views, where he addresses issues that are ancillary to conquering aging like what’s going to happen to social security and the impact of a growing population on global warming. He also comes out for universal healthcare, legalized euthanasia, and more income equality.
There is no particular reason that the world’s foremost expert on aging should be expected to have anything new or interesting to say on these topics, and he doesn’t. I would’ve skipped these chapters, except for the fact that I was planning on writing a book review and felt obligated to slog through them. It’s not that a professor at Harvard Medical School can’t have interesting political views, it’s that Sinclair’s opinions are a boring mélange of what one would find across Atlantic think pieces. But for some reason he feels the need to pontificate on various topics that have nothing to do with his area of expertise.
Why? Most likely, he’s simply filling up space. Either he thought the book needed some padding, or maybe he felt the urge to preach about single-payer healthcare and decided to trap readers into hearing his views after he lured them in with the anti-aging stuff.