Unretirement: How Baby Boomers are Changing the Way We Think About Work, Community, and the Good Life

The budget battles of recent years have amplified the warnings of demographic doomsayers who predicted that a wave of baby boomers would bleed America dry, bankrupting Social Security and Medicare as they faded into an impoverished old age. On the contrary, argues award-winning journalist Chris Farrell, we are instead on the verge of a broad, positive transformation of our economy and society.

The old idea of "retirement"—a word that means withdrawal, describing a time when people gave up ...