Book Review: “Leisureville: Adventures in America’s Retirement Utopias”

I don’t know what prompted me to pick up “Leisureville” by Andrew D. Blechman. At 35 years old, I’m far away from retirement (assuming I will even be able to retire). Even so, there has always been something about these Stepford-like developments that has fascinated, and scared, me. From Blechman’s Web site : “When his next-door neighbors in a quaint New England town suddenly pick up and move to a gated retirement community in Florida called ‘ The Villages ,’ Blechman is astonished by their stories, so he goes to investigate. Larger than Manhattan, with a golf course for every day of the month, two downtowns, its own newspaper, radio, and TV stations, The Villages is a city of nearly one hundred thousand (and growing), missing only one thing: children. “ I tore through it in one afternoon. As a piece of literary journalism, it shines: there were places where I laughed out loud (such as when the author t...