This book is quite different than the author's other one that I like so much, "The Joy of Not Working." The format is quite different. In my opinion, the organizational structure is not as good. But in the end, there is a wealth of good, solid, useful, insightful information contained inside, and that would be the point of reading it in the first place.
In short, "Happy, Wild and Free" is another winner by Zelinski for retiree readers, and it can serve as a great "only" retirement book for those who are looking for that. I can't imagine anyone feeling they don't get their money's worth from reading the book.
Just a read of the preface may be worth the price of admission. Here we find a good overview of the subject of retirement, with some first-class comments to boot: "Retirement is the perfect time to become the person you would like to be and do the things you have always wanted to do." "Retirement can be both exciting and demanding, bringing new challenges, new experiences, and new uncertainties." "...retirement is the last opportunity for individuals to reinvent themselves, let go of the past, and find peace and happiness within." "Despite the bad press that retirement sometimes gets, there has never been a better time to be retired in Western nations." And the one I like the best: "The most fortunate of retirees are those who through good planning, experimentation, and risk-taking succeed in making retirement the best time of their lives."
I just don't think the elements of this retirement insight and advice gets any better any place else. I truly believe that Zelinski is the reigning guru on retirement, and I have since I first found and read, "The Art of Retirement." If Zelinski didn't exist, I think we would have to have invent him. But he's saved us the trouble with his combination of fantastic books on retirement.
The major criticism of the book is that, for me, the flow of chapters and even the flow of sections within the chapters does not work. The collection of chapter sections, I think, could probably be randomly placed with the same eventual result. It's not like one section logically follows the other, nor positively belongs in one chapter rather than another.
And, as I look back through my notes in the book, I find words I've written such as "sophomoric," "irrelevant," "repetitive," "dumb," and "weak." I simply do not find all sections of the book to be at the level I want them to be. But that's it. That's all of my criticisms. To me the reader is free, after reading the preface, to read through the rest of the book, remembering quotes and advice and insight along the way, finding sections that he or she finds valuable and to be favorites, ignoring those found not to be worth the read.
The flaws that I see should not prevent most from finding the bulk of the book to be well worth the effort. I highly recommend this book as a gift to oneself and/or for others. I don't think it gets any better than Zelinski when you look for books on the subject of life after work.
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