My 25 year-old son, who is a social entrepreneur, gave me Marc Freedman’s book, Encore, Finding Work That Matters In the Second Half of Life, a couple weeks ago and it resonated with me immediately. Of course I’m nearing 62, one of the conventional retirement ages, and the stories of the people in their 50’s and 60’s profiled by Freedman who gave up high-powered high-paying jobs to work in areas that are more spiritually fulfilling inspired me.

The uplifting personal stories aside, there was much information in Encore that I had not considered, which I believe needs be part of our country’s public debate on retirement.

Freedman gives us a history lesson about the 50 year-old origin of our culture’s current notions about retirement. It was a time when business opportunities meshed with labor needs; “the golden years” were born. Freedman goes on to underscore how unsustainable this notion of retiring at 65 is, given our current economy, the fragility of Social Security and the insufficient intellectual power and expertise in the remaining labor force.

Freedman is very realistic about the challenges that boomers currently face as they attempt to create meaningful jobs: the lack of support in Medicare and IRA rules and in most institutions including those involved in providing advice for jobseekers. He’s also very pragmatic about the percentage of people who would choose to be weaned from the current notions of leisure and retirement; however, he believes that even if few boomers such as 5% were to continue to work well beyond 65 in socially meaningful jobs, the impact could be dramatic.

If these issues interest you, you will love this book.

Reviewed by Terry Soto, BuzzFlash.com


Publisher’s Summary

The boomers are rejecting conventional notions of retirement and crossing into a new stage of work—and their energy could transform what work means for all Americans

The movement of millions of sixty-somethings into a new phase in their working lives constitutes one of the most significant social trends in this country in nearly half a century. Encore describes the competing visions for work that are already lining up to capture the hearts and minds, and the time, of waves of baby boomers who are not content, or affluent enough, to spend their next twenty or thirty years on the golf course. Baby boomers are searching for a calling in the second half of life; they are moving beyond midlife yet refusing to phase out or fade away.

If the old dream of the Golden Years was the Freedom from Work, the dream of this new wave is the Freedom to Work—in new ways, on new terms, to new ends. As their numbers begin to swell, these individuals hold the potential not only to transform work in America, but to create a society that balances the joys and responsibilities of contribution across the generations—in other words, one that works better for everyone.


A note from MARC FREEDMAN

Tens of millions of baby boomers are entering a period of their lives between midlife and the onset of true old age. For most, this period will not only be a new stage of life, but also of work. I wrote this book to provide a vision of hope—not only for their own fulfillment, but for a nation where a full quarter of the population will soon be over sixty. It is a vision drawn from interviews with hundreds of people in their fifties and sixties in search of a calling in the second half of life. These conversations left me with the sense that I was glimpsing something of historic proportions—that this is what it must have been like to travel the country in the late 1960s and early 1970s interviewing women breaking through to new roles at work, in the process changing the nature of work for everyone.

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