{"product_id":"golden-years-how-americans-invented-and-reinvented-old-age","title":"Golden Years: How Americans Invented and Reinvented Old Age","description":"An “essential” (The New Republic) account of the history of old age in modern America, showing how we created unprecedented security for some and painful uncertainty for others\n\nOn 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.\n\nIn 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.\n\nAs 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.\u003cbr\u003eASIN: 1541619528\u003cbr\u003eVSKU: BVV.1541619528.A\u003cbr\u003eCondition: Acceptable\u003cbr\u003eAuthor\/Artist:Chappel, James\u003cbr\u003eBinding: Hardcover\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eNote:\u003c\/b\u003e Any images shown are stock photographs and product may differ from what is shown.  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCondition Notes\u003c\/b\u003e: The item is very worn but is perfectly usable. Signs of wear can include aesthetic issues such as scratches, dents, worn and creased covers, folded page corners and minor liquid stains. All pages and the cover are intact, but the dust cover may be missing. Pages may include moderate to heavy amount of notes and highlighting, but the text is not obscured or unreadable. Page edges may have foxing  age related spots and browning . May NOT include discs, access code or other supplemental materials.  \u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Blue Vase Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43278511407165,"sku":"BVV.1541619528.A","price":8.75,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0589\/4225\/9261\/files\/1541619528-0.jpg?v=1781645828","url":"https:\/\/www.bluevasebooks.com\/products\/golden-years-how-americans-invented-and-reinvented-old-age","provider":"Blue Vase Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}