A persistent theme in comparative gerontology has been the effort to unravel the intertwined effects of the universal processes of aging common to all people everywhere, and those aspects of aging which are affected by cultural beliefs and practices and differing social and economic conditions. In order to sort out the universal from the culturally specific we need to be comparative across cultures. And in that major goal of comparative gerontology lies its central problem: being comparative. Being comparative requires comparable data, not easy to get cross-culturally. We must ask ourselves: what information is needed, how can we get it, and what form should it take, in order for it to be comparable?Some research is designed to be comparative in the doing: cross-national surveys, for example, or research involving people of different socio-economic or ethnic backgrounds in one society. However, many research projects are not in themselves comparative, though data from them can be used comparatively in secondary analyses, in holocultural studies, and in descriptive comparisons such as those in Cowgill and Holmes (1972).The books under consideration here are examples of both planned comparative field research and post-field research comparison. The Elderly in Eleven Countries and Aging in the Western Pacific present commentary and descriptive statistics on the results of large-scale sociomedical surveys sponsored by WHO in 15 nations. A major aim of both projects was to develop comprehensive databases for the nations involved as they set policy and develop social and health care programs for the aged. The 8 authors in the more anthropologically
