Do older Americans have a great deal power? If this is true, what, if anything, is wrong with it? The answers to these questions are “they do” and “a lot”—or so this presentation sampling a forthcoming book will argue. The age of politicians serving in different offices is just the tip of the iceberg of American gerontocracy, which revives a standard premodern form of rule in postmodern form, brought about as a byproduct of the extension of life.

Samuel Moyn is the Kent Professor of Law and History at Yale University.