CYCLES: How We Will Live, Work, and Buy

Dychtwald runs Age Wave, a consulting firm specializing in teaching clients how to sell to baby boomers and mature adults, two rapidly merging categories. As life expectancies continue to grow, boomers are staying active and, Dychtwald argues, rapidly replacing the 18-to-34 demographic as the prime force driving the economy. She shows how they're defying conventional wisdom about growing old in the arenas of work and leisure, as well as with relationships and the concept of retirement. Although her cultural references are up-to-date, her conclusions seem at least five years behind the times, e.g., her idea that people are getting remarried and starting second families is already a cliché. People who worked for dot-coms in the mid-'90s or found themselves out of a dot-com job by 2001 already know the importance of developing new skills to shift to a second or third career. Likewise, the "self-responsibility and empowerment" trend she sees in Americans' personal health regimes should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the increased interest in everything from yoga to gingko pills. Boil it all down, and here's what you've got: previous generations had a "midlife crisis," but boomers have put a positive spin on the process and "reinvent" themselves. It's no wonder Dychtwald finds herself repeatedly defending the "Me Generation" against the specter of narcissism. The book sets itself up as a successor to Gail Sheehy's "important but increasingly obsolete" Passages, but it is already behind the times itself. Agent, Doris Michaels. (Feb. 11)