A new book by Kathleen Riach is a major event and a gift for those of us with interests in ageing and work. When we started the Rethinking Work, Ageing and Society series, we wanted to publish books that shine a critical light on the issues that affect people as they age. Significant changes in the landscape include extended working lives and rising state pension ages, changes to job transitions in later life, an increasing recognition of health transitions in the workplace, and shifts towards individual responsibility and risk in private pensions saving. Volumes in the series have successfully explored some of these issues through critical, theoretically informed social science research. However, there is an important broader issue to be explored about how people experience ageing today and how we can make sense of this. This is not about focusing on a particular life stage, on older workers per se, or working in ‘later life’, although this remains important; rather, it relates to ageing as a process that proceeds and is experienced over the life course.

In this context, we are delighted to welcome Kathleen Riach's excellent new book, Working through Ageing. Throughout her distinguished career, Professor Riach's research has encouraged us to think more deeply, and differently, about ageing and work. This ambitious new project presents the theory of ‘working through ageing’, which seeks to avoid the common imbalance of focusing exclusively on ageing as something imposed upon individuals within organizational contexts or as something that is purely the locus of the individual.