ABSTRACT
Andrejs Plakans has written a thoughtful and stimulating chapter on retirement in traditional Europe. Weaving together fragmentary pieces of information about the process of stepping down, he examined how older people detached themselves from the world of work. The scope of his chapter is broad chronologically and geographically: He discusses this life-course transition from the 12th through the 20th centuries and throughout western and eastern Europe. Rather than discussing his specific interpretations, I offer some additional observations-especially from the perspective of colonial and 19thcentury America.
