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 enlarge | Author: Marc Freedman
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
Buy New: $8.00
You Save: $6.95 (46%)
New (29) Used (11) from $7.99
Rating:  28 reviews
Sales Rank: 149957
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 272
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.4 x 0.9
ISBN: 1586486349
Dewey Decimal Number: 305
EAN: 9781586486341
ASIN: 1586486349
Publication Date: August 25, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Condition: Brand New. Perfect Gift Quality. No remainder marks or other blemishes.
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| Customer Reviews:
 More useful gift than a gold watch for someone nearing the end of their primary career July 18, 2007
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
I just reviewed this book for LifeTwo.com and found "Encore" to be an enjoyable, quick read with a lot of insight and useful information with data to support author Marc Freedman's positions. Among Freedman's observations that I found most interesting:
1. Careers are getting shorter while lives are getting longer.
2. Work is no longer considered bad for your health.
3. People who think they are retiring end up are increasingly getting bored and then returning back to the wok force.
4. Encore careers benefit society as a whole.
Add these up and you get a social trend. Looking at it individually, if you are in the middle age then the takeaway from this book is relevant and applicable career advice for the next phase of your life.
Encore: Finding Work that Matters in the Second Half of Life July 18, 2007
10 out of 10 found this review helpful
More and more Baby Boomers are foregoing retirement to fulfill their career dreams. It is a trend that we are hearing a lot about lately. To me, it makes perfect sense. For the majority of people, raising our families, trying to pay off the mortgage, and just trying to survive financially forces us into jobs that pay the bills but leave us feeling cold and uninspired.
Many often fantasize about retirement but in reality the dream falls flat. Having a rest from the chaos of the rat race sounds wonderful and it is, at least for a while. Then, the realizations set in. Retirement was meant as a temporary situation, a nice little vacation before you died. Just a few decades ago, that was usually less than a decade. Now, with life spans ever increasing retirement could last 20, 30, or even 40 years, most of which the retiree will be quite healthy and mobile.
Who can play that much golf? Who wants to do absolutely nothing for 40 years? Who can even afford that? Enter the potential of a second career. Now that little nest egg can be used to finance needed schooling, the start of a new business, or serve as a subsidy for lower paying but more heartfelt work.
Encore not only discusses these important trends in retirement but shares the stories of individuals who followed their career dreams in the second half of their life. This book is definitely filled with important information for us all, whether we plan to retire in the near future or are just considering our options for the future.
Great read July 18, 2007
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
Once again, Marc Freedman has captured the yearning of the baby boomers to leave a legacy. We're not a drag on youth and the economy. Encore shoes how Americans can go from success to significance. It's a great read.
Inspiring, insightful...full of wisdom and hope July 13, 2007
8 out of 9 found this review helpful
Marc Freedman's beautifully-told stories of people discovering joy in their second half reminds me of Peter Drucker's advice in the classic article Managing Oneself (HBR OnPoint Enhanced Edition) that most people grow bored later in life and need work that will keep them growing. In biology, the definition of death is when an organism stops growing. As all too many of us know, that applies to human beings too.
Readers who are interested in Encore will also find our just-published book Fired Up or Burned Out: How to Reignite Your Team's Passion, Creativity, and Productivity relevant to the issue of what keeps us growing and vibrant in life. Our research concludes that people universally have six needs that help them thrive. They are respect, recognition, belonging, autonomy, personal growth and meaning. In the case of the individuals in Encore, their second half endeavors help meet these needs. They are working at a task they do well and are learning to do even better as they develop mastery. They work around people who respect them and recognize their contribution. They feel a sense of belonging to a community of like-minded individuals. Finally, they find meaning in their work as well as in the relationships they have with other community members. Encore helps us see how people meet these needs and it gives us hope that our second halves can be even better than our firsts.
To this Encore, I say bravo. July 12, 2007
28 out of 29 found this review helpful
In sharp juxtaposition to "The Golden Years" legend embraced by our parents' generation - the housing industry-inspired mythology that serves up retirement as a time for carefree, unending play - Marc Freedman suggests something else: "If graying continues to mean only playing, it will mean paying...
"We can't afford a leisure class that makes up one-fourth of the population."
In his new book, Encore: Finding Work That Matters in the Second Half of Life, Freedman asks: "How could the best thing that has ever happened to us as individuals - the dramatic extension of life and health - amount to the worst thing that has happened to us as a nation?"
To encapsulate what he means by "the worst thing," Freedman identifies eight factors contributing to a gathering "perfect storm," the first four of which are darkly ominous.
First, Freedman drives home a message being carried by many thought-leaders today: inexorable demographics. By 2030, 25% of all U.S. residents will be 60 and older. Never before in the history of the nation, or for that matter, Western society, will so many people have reached the 7th decade of life.
Second, not only is the nation growing older; Americans are living longer. By mid-century, average life expectancy in the longest-lived countries may exceed the century mark. According to my analysis of census bureau statistics, by 2065 our nation will be home to at least 2.1 million centenarians.
Third, huge numbers of aging adults and increasing longevity imply that many will face the prospect of financing 30 or more years in retirement. Aside from the wealthiest of the generation, few Boomers have saved enough for so many years without added income. My research has disclosed that roughly 25% of the Boomer generation is technically broke today, with net assets of $10,000 or less.
Fourth, the retirement safety nets relied upon by our parents -- Social Security and Medicare -- are in severe danger of collapse. I have had an opportunity to hear disconcerting presentations by David Walker, Comptroller General of the United States. The total future unfunded liability of the U.S. government, including entitlement programs, is $46.4 trillion. Unimaginable national debt will inexorably lead to disastrous consequences for our economy, for us, and even for our children's children.
One way to think of an encore is as repetition, a repeated musical performance for example. Marc Freedman is in one sense calling on Boomers to repeat their careers again for perhaps shorter stints after the time of traditional retirement. This paradigm shift can go a long way in quelling the storm by increasing the number of years we are making instead of just consuming money.
But the book title has another, much larger implication. It is important that we realize something is greater at stake then just keeping Boomers busy, longer.
If that's all we need, then probably the so-called "bridge jobs" would be sufficient. These are the myriad retail and customer service jobs, such as Wal-Mart greeters, that employers are eager to fill with over-qualified Boomers at low wages. These McJobs also answer the yearning for "busyness," a sense that all's right with the world because we're busy, busy, busy.
Freedman isn't just suggesting an encore in a literal sense. If you haven't guessed by now, he is calling on his generation "to a gathering movement whose larger purpose is to solve the greatest problems facing humanity today."
Many books are now being published about the Boomer generation and what the aging of this segment means to the economy, to the healthcare system and to the future of aging. Some of these books simply rehash similar concepts and insights.
Marc Freedman's Encore offers a fresh approach by not only identifying potential problems of population aging but also creating a coherent vision for how we can transform "the problems" into unparalleled opportunities for businesses, nonprofit organizations and our society as a whole. It's a clarion call to a generation and an optimistic portrayal of how Boomers can make our "long, strange trip" even better.
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