The Baby Boom generation has always been known as a demographic anomaly and these 77 million Americans have dominated our society for the past 60 years, setting trends and revolutionizing entire industries. They didn't just date, they transformed sex roles and practices. They didn't just go to the doctor, they reinvented healthcare. And now retirement and aging will never be the same as the oldest boomers move into their 60s with no thoughts of traditional retirement or old-age homes! Featuring insightful interviews and essays from Baby Boomers like Dr. Andrew Weill, Erica Jong, Eve Ensler, Rob Reiner, Oliver Stone, Lester Thurow, and Tony Snow, THE BOOMER CENTURY is an entertaining, historical and cultural look at a truly amazing generation.

The Baby Boom generation has always been known asa demographic anomaly and these 77 million Americanshave dominated our society for the past 60 years, settingtrends and revolutionizing entire industries. They didn'tjust date, they transformed sex roles and practices. Theydidn't just go to the doctor, they reinvented healthcare. And now retirement and aging will never be the sameas the oldest boomers move into their 60s with nothoughts of traditional retirement or old-age homes!Featuring insightful interviews and essays from BabyBoomers like Dr. Andrew Weill, Erica Jong, Eve Ensler, Rob Reiner, Oliver Stone, Lester Thurow, and TonySnow, THE BOOMER CENTURY is an entertaining, historical and cultural look at a truly amazing generation.

Once you hit that magic age of 64 (give or take a few years) and stop working, what are you going to do with the rest of your life? How can you accumulate enough assets to allow you to continue to live a comfortable lifestyle? How can you use your retirement years most productively? How can you stack the odds in your favor in terms of maintaining both physical and mental health? These are the questions facing millions of baby boomers today. This book provides the answers. In these pages, you'll discover a practical, common-sense approach that can lead to a happy and fulfilling retirement beyond your wildest dreams... making the rest of your life truly the best of your life. The interweaving of Marvin Tolkin's life story -- a true success story -- with folksy wisdom, practical advice, and incisive commentary is a powerful combination. Every baby boomer -- and their children -- should read this book. -- From the Foreword by Dr. Robert N. Butler, Pulitzer-prize winning author and President and CEO, International Longevity Center

"Dychtwald and Morison offer a brilliant and convincing perspective: an essential re-think of what 'aging' and 'retirement' mean today and an invitation to help mobilize the best in the tidal wave of Boomer Third Agers." —Daniel Goleman, PhD, Author, Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ Throughout 99 percent of human history, life expectancy at birth was less than 18 years. Few people had a chance to age. Today, thanks to extraordinary medical, demographic, and economic shifts, most of us expect to live long lives. Consequently, the world is witnessing a powerful new version of retirement, driven by the power and needs of the Baby Boomer generation. Consumers over age 50 account for more than half of all spending and control more than 70% of our total net worth – yet are largely ignored by youth-focused marketers. How will work, family, and retirement be transformed to accommodate two billion people over the age of 60 worldwide? In the coming years, we'll see explosive business growth fueled by this unprecedented longevity revolution. What Retirees Want presents the culmination of 30 years of research by world-famous "Age Wave" expert Ken Dychtwald, Ph.D., and author and consultant Robert Morison. It explains how the aging of the Baby Boomers will forever change our lives, businesses, government programs, and the consumer marketplace. This exciting new stage of life, the "Third Age," poses daunting questions: What will "old" look like in the years ahead? With continued advances in longevity, all of the traditional life-stage markers and boundaries will need to be adjusted. What new products and services will boom as a result of this coming longevity revolution? What unconscious ageist marketing practices are hurting people – and business growth? Will the majority of elder boomers outlive their pensions and retirement savings and how can this financial disaster be prevented? What incredible new technologies of medicine, life extension, and human enhancement await us in the near future? What purposeful new roles can we create for elder boomers so that the aging nations of the Americas, Europe, and Asia capitalize on the upsides of aging? Which pioneering organizations and companies worldwide have created marketing strategies and programs that resonate with the quirky and demanding Boomer generation? In this entertaining, thought-provoking, and wide-ranging book, Dychtwald and Morison explain how individuals, businesses, non-profits, and governments can best prepare for a new era – where the needs and demands of the "Third Age" will set the lifestyle, health, social, marketplace, and political priorities of generations to come.

In this breakthrough book, Dychtwald explains how individuals, businesses, and governments can best prepare for a new era in which the priorities of our homes and nation will be set by the needs and desires of the elderly. He surveys how each of us must make individual decisions right now to "age-proof" our lives.

In this insightful book, the nation's leading researchers, analysts, educators, and experts on health and aging policies and programs present their frustrations, findings, and insights on what current research reveals about the future of the healthy aging. They then offer sound recommendations on how to prevent a crisis in health care.

As I was preparing this work, I asked some young adults (early 20s of today) what they know about the baby boomers. One reply was, You had morals. Today, people dont. Another reply was, My grandmother is one, and she worries a lot. Then he qualified his statement with this idea, No, she really takes good care of us. Thus, he was implying that the baby boomers are very humanitarian. Naturally, each of these statements is a value judgment and is open to opinion, and everyone knows that every generation has good and bad people. However, I would qualify the statement that the first young man said with this idea: I do believe that the baby boom generation has been a generation of traditional values in a very special way that no others in modern times seem to have been. Another way to say that is to say that baby boomers followed their parents values in a way that no other generation of modern times has done.

Die Beiträge des vorliegenden Bandes gehen aus einer gemeinsamen Tagung des Graduiertenkollegs "Generationengeschichte" der Georg-August-Universität Göttingen und des Deutschen Historischen Instituts in Washington hervor. Verschiedene Generationenkonzepte standen sich hier gegenüber: die europäische Idee von "Jugendgenerationen" und "politischen Generationen" und die eher pragmatische amerikanische Lesart von den "demographischen Generationen" oder den "Konsumgenerationen". Immer, so scheint es, wird die generationelle Logik überlagert von nationalen Vorstellungen der Dazugehörigkeit. Sehr deutlich arbeiten die Beiträge aus Europa und den USA heraus, dass die historische Zeit wohl in Generationen gelesen wird, doch wird Geschichte nicht von Generationen gemacht.

Because researchers often treat baby boomers of color as belonging to one group, quality data on the individual status of specific racial populations is lacking, leading to insufficiently designed programs, policies, and services. The absence of data is a testament to the invisibility of baby boomers of color in society and deeply affects the practice of social work and other helping professions that require culturally sensitive approaches. Melvin Delgado rectifies this injustice by providing a comprehensive portrait of the status and unique assets of boomers of color. Using specific data, he grounds an understanding of boomers'financial, medical, and emotional needs within a historical, socioeconomic, cultural, and political context, resulting in tailored recommendations for meeting the challenges of a growing population. His research focuses on African American, Hispanic, Asian/Pacific Islander, and Native American older adults and addresses issues of financial security, employment stability, housing, and health care, which are often complicated by linguistic and cultural differences. Rather than treat baby boomers of color as a financial burden on society and its resources, Delgado recognizes their strengths and positive contributions to families and communities, resulting in an affirming and empowering approach to service.

Read Jeff Gordinier's posts on the Penguin Blog In this simultaneously hilarious and incisive "manifesto for a generation that's never had much use for manifestos," Gordinier suggests that for the first time since the "Smells Like Teen Spirit"breakthrough of the early 1990s, Gen X has what it takes to rescue American culture from a state of collapse. Over the past twenty years, the so-called "slackers"have irrevocably changed countless elements of our culture-from the way we watch movies to the way we make sense of a cracked political process to the way the whole world does business.