Losing It: In which an Aging Professor laments his shrinking Brain... - Hardcover

William Ian Miller is Thomas G. Long Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School. He lives in Ann Arbor, MI.

"A stylish, effortlessly erudite and refreshingly clear-eyed essay about the dastardly — yet inevitable — fate of getting older."—Julia Keller, Chicago Tribune, Best Books 2011 (Julia Keller Chicago Tribune)

"Miller takes target at the inevitable aging process, and finds much more humor than might be expected . . . Readers may turn to the book for contemplation or a much-needed laugh as they themselves continue the unavoidable journey."—Publishers Weekly (Publishers Weekly)

"Blackly funny and wonderfully thought-provoking. . . A raging screed directed less against the dying of the light than against any denial that the lamps—his, mine, yours—are indeed dimming all the time.”—Brian Bethune, Maclean's (Brian Bethune Maclean's)

"[Miller's] vigorous pessimism is strangely liberating. . . At times Miller's determined miserabilism gets it so right that all one can do is sit back, revel in the shock of recognition, and laugh aloud."—Laurie Taylor, Times Higher Education Supplement (Laurie Taylor Times Higher Education Supplement)

"[Miller] is a prankster, a tease, an imp of the perverse, a digressor-transgressor. . .The claim could be made that not since Laurence Sterne's great 18th-century joke of a novel, Tristram Shandy, has any book been so well-founded on the slippery rock of digression."—Henry Allen, Wall Street Journal (Henry Allen Wall Street Journal)

“Beautifully written, original, deeply insightful, often laugh-out-loud witty, and on not a few occasions (despite the author's curmudgeonly persona) a moving and affecting book.”—Andrew Stark, Professor of Strategic Management, the University of Toronto (Andrew Stark)

"Nobody lives history like Bill Miller. The rest of us may enjoy reading about the Middle Ages. Miller suffers through them, and in reporting on his experiences, he gives us autobiography that ranks with the greats."—James Whitman, Yale Law School (James Whitman)

"[Miller] is witty and intimidatingly well-read . . . His shtick is so marvelously entertaining that you're willing to listen to what is—by his own admission—a grumpy diatribe over all that's lost by the relentless ticktock."—Julia Keller, Chicago Tribune (Julia Keller Chicago Tribune)

"Miller takes target at the inevitable aging process, and finds much more humor than might be expected . . . His leisurely pace and straight talk brings topics that are not always openly discussed into the realm of everyday conversation . . . Readers may turn to the book for contemplation or a much-needed laugh as they themselves continue the unavoidable journey."—Publishers Weekly

(Publishers Weekly)

"Miller can grouse and chide with the best, but not all is grim modern comedy. With equal facility, he brings a seriously learned and entertaining hand to the project of growing old in earlier times. . . Everywhere here is the twinkle in Miller's eye. He is having a high and fine old time, and so are we. Old age has become a rueful burlesque, and Miller gives it a mordant poke with a sharpened stick, but he also makes us laugh."—Peter Lewis, Barnes and Noble Review (Peter Lewis Barnes & Noble Review)