"From Strength to Strength" by Arthur Brooks

Arthur Brooks always wanted to be a French horn player. And became one, winding up playing professionally in the United States and Europe. In his early twenties, however, he realized he wasn’t getting better at his instrument. He was getting worse.“I visited famous teachers and practiced more, but I couldn’t get back to where I had been. Pieces that had been easy to play became hard; pieces that had been hard became impossible,” he noted.Brooks, the author of “From Strength to Strength,” suggests that what he went through was traumatic but not all that unusual. While there’s a drop-off in abilities that people experience in their forties and fifties, the good news is that there’s a second wave to ride to success that favors people who are older, says Brooks.A decline in fluid intelligence doesn’t mean you’re washed up, the author states. “It means it’s time to jump off the fluid intelligence curve and onto the crystallized intelligence curve. Crystallized intelligence relies on a stock of knowledge and tends to increase with age, Brooks said.