Böcker av James Chappel

The surprising history of old age in modern America, showing how we created unprecedented security for some and painful uncertainty for others On farms and in factories, Americans once had little choice but to work until death. As the nation prospered, a new idea was born: the right to a dignified and secure old age. That project has benefited millions, but it remains incomplete--and today it's under siege. In Golden Years, historian James Chappel shows how old age first emerged as a distinct stage of life and how it evolved over the last century, shaped by politicians' choices, activists' demands, medical advancements, and cultural models from utopian novels to The Golden Girls. Only after World War II did government subsidies and employer pensions allow people to retire en masse. Just one generation later, this model crumbled. Older people streamed back into the workforce, and free-market policymakers pushed the burdens of aging back onto older Americans and their families. We now confront an old age mired in contradictions: ever longer lifespans and spiraling health-care costs, 401(k)s and economic precarity, unprecedented opportunity and often disastrous instability. As the population of older Americans grows, Golden Years urges us to look to the past to better understand old age today--and how it could be better tomorrow.

Be happy with who you are and make the most of the gifts you have. Remember you are very special. There is only one person in the entire universe like you.William the Pig

In 1900 the Catholic Church stood staunchly against human rights, religious freedom, and the secular state-disastrous concepts unleashed by the French Revolution. Yet by the 1960s its position was reversed. How did the world's largest religious organization become modern? James Chappel finds answers in the shattering experiences of the 1930s.