On Retirement

Daniel Horowitz is Mary Huggins Gamble Professor Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of American Studies at Smith College. He is the author of 10 books, most recently, Bear With Me: A Cultural History of Famous Bears in America and American Dreams, American Nightmares: Culture and Crisis in Residential Real Estate from the Great Recession to the COVID-19 Pandemic.

"With a knack for wonderful story telling and fascinating detail and the perspective of an esteemed cultural historian and ever-engaged and curious retired person, Daniel Horowitz offers the general reader a comprehensive look at the experience, dilemmas, and uniqueness of aging in modern America." - Gary Cross, author of Free Time: The History of an Elusive Ideal "America has been getting older by the minute – and has been for decades. We've done so the way we do everything: loudly, chaotically, and democratically. In On Retirement, Daniel Horowitz listens in on that conversation, brilliantly distilling retirement manuals and magazines and TikToks into an elegant narrative about an aging America." - James Chappel, Duke University, author of Golden Years "This landmark book does something no one has done in nearly fifty years: it treats retirement and later life as a major cultural, political, and moral invention – and asks whether our institutions have caught up. Filled with revealing insights into advice manuals, scientific studies, movies, senior housing, and the rise of groups like AARP, a leading cultural historian shows how a stage of life once defined by decline has been reimagined as a time of purpose and even adventure – though only for those with the means to claim it. If longer lives are the great social achievement of the postwar era, then building the supports to make those lives livable for everyone is the great unfinished task. Anyone who is old, loves someone who is old, or plans to become old should read this book." - Steven Mintz, author of The Prime of Life: A History of Modern Adulthood "A must read for anyone seeking to understand the policy choices, media markets, and capital investments shaping retirement today, Horowitz's On Retirement combines compelling cultural critique with personal experience to explain the past and map the future of aging in America." - Corinne Field, author of The Struggle for Equal Adulthood: Gender, Race, Age, and the Fight for Citizenship in Antebellum America