Review by Choice Review
Retirement is often called the golden years: a well-deserved break, full of images of senior citizens golfing, traveling, and simply enjoying themselves after long years of working. However, this book focuses on the discontents and uncertainties associated with this important life change. As the author argues, "For many people, retirement is supposed to be the ultimate goal and reward after a lifetime of work. Yet for some, it can be incredibly disappointing, frustrating, intimidating, and even more overwhelming than starting a career." The book is organized in seven chapters (including a substantive introduction and conclusion), featuring stories and qualitative accounts of retirement. These stories come from five types of work: doctors, CEOs, elite athletes, professors, and homemakers. This is a timely focus on retirements, as many industrialized nations face an aging population. A qualitative approach focusing on the lived experience of retirees in creating retirement identities using theoretical tropes from Freud is also an interesting approach. This reviewer would have liked to see a stronger methodological discussion on the inclusion of these particular sectors, and a stronger discussion on income, class, and race in the understanding of the lived experience of retirement. With long quotes and personal stories, the middle chapters especially can be useful for classroom use. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. --Yasemin Besen-Cassino, Montclair State University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
