The book is based on extensive interviews with eighty-nine men and women before and after their retirement from middle-income careers. Weiss makes vivid their experiences by presenting, in their own words, their descriptions of leaving their careers, considering what to do with their time, confronting issues of income in retirement, dealing, sometimes, with social isolation, and reorganizing their lives. The interviews reveal the way in which retirement affects marriages and other familial relationships. Weiss concludes by presenting advice about retirement based on the actual experiences of retirees. For anyone approaching the age of retirement or already retired and looking for a more satisfying post-career life, for personnel managers, health care professionals, and all those who provide services for the retired, The Experience of Retirement will be an illuminating guidebook to this phase of life.
Robert S. Weiss is a Senior Fellow in the Gerontology Institute and Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and a Lecturer in Sociology in the Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School. He is the author of Marital Separation, Learning from Strangers, and Staying the Course. David J. Ekerdt is Professor of Sociology and Interim Director of the Gerontology Center at the University of Kansas.