No Time Like the Future: An Optimist Considers Mortality

Actor and advocate Michael J. Fox shares a poignant story on how fear, death, hope, and perseverance all resound in our lives.

The world is familiar with Michael J. Fox from his performances as Spin City's Mike Flaherty, Alex P. Keaton in Family Ties, and Doc Brown's adolescent sidekick Marty McFly. He has starred in many more films and made cameos on television programmes including Curb Your Enthusiasm and The Good Wife. Since receiving his diagnosis at the age of 29, Michael has dedicated himself to advocating for people with Parkinson's disease worldwide, bringing attention to the condition and working towards a cure via The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research, the world's largest non-profit supporter of PD research. His two best-selling autobiographies, Always Looking Up and Lucky Man, explored how he overcame the disease while maintaining his renowned optimism. This perspective is reevaluated in his new book since the last ten years have brought fresh difficulties.

Michael offers his own experiences and insights regarding health and disease, ageing, the support of friends and family, and how our ideas about time influence how we face death in No Time Like the Future: An Optimist Considers Mortality. With a touch of Fox's signature humour mixed in with poignancy and emotion, his book offers a platform for contemplation on our lives, our loves, and our losses.

The story is woven with the dramatic story of Fox's recent medical crises, which includes his everyday struggles with Parkinson's disease, which he has had since 1991, and a spinal cord problem that required emergency surgery. After taking on the task of learning to walk again, he almost gave up on his characteristic optimism and decided to "get out of the lemonade business altogether" after suffering a terrible fall.

Does he manage to return all the way? Examine the book.