The Villages® retirement community in Central Florida is home to 700+ holes of golf, 200+ pickleball courts, 100 recreation centers, 100+ swimming pools, 3,000+ resident clubs and organizations, 100+ restaurants, a wide range of shops, grocery stores, and medical offices, free live entertainment nightly, and to top it off, nearly everything is golf cart accessible. With all of that in mind, it's no wonder why 130,000 retirees call it home.Yes, it's an incredible place, but it's not for everyone. Thousands of people buy and move here every year, but thousands more take a close look and decide it's not for them. This book was written to help you decide if it's the right place for you.

Join thousands of current and future "Villagers" who have learned from The Villages Florida Book.If you have big dreams of one day retiring to The Villages, but you just don't know where to start gathering the best information - you are not alone. The Villages Florida Book is designed to help you separate the fact from fiction about America's most popular retirement community, and begin your new life in The Villages with confidence.The Villages is one of the most popular Central Florida retirement communities. Ask anyone who lives there and they'll probably tell you there were things they wish they'd known more about before buying in The Villages. The Villages is a great place to live. But there are several important things that you need to know.The book's author, Ryan Erisman, runs the popular website TheVillagesFloridaBook.com and is the editor of The Villages Monthly, the only unbiased monthly newsletter published today about The Villages. The founder of For Boomers Media, he is also a contributing writer to several publications focused on retirement community living including 2nd Home Journal, Boomers On The Move, and others. Ryan's books have been featured in publications such as Where to Retire Magazine, Florida Home Builder, Florida Realtor Magazine, Top Retirements, and more.The Villages Florida Book was written to help people like you because there was no other complete resource on this popular retirement community. This is the most comprehensive book of its kind about The Villages available anywhere.

Blechman delves into life in a gated retirement community and offers a hilarious, first-hand report on all its peculiarities. He also takes a serious look at the consequences of such instant cities and examines the implications of millions of Americans dropping out of society.

This revealing profile “disappears down the rabbit hole [into] the largest gated retirement community in the world” and what it discovers is “fascinating” (The New York Times). When his next-door neighbors pick up and move from New England to an age-restricted “active adult” development in Florida called The Villages, Andrew D. Blechman is astonished by their stories—and determined to investigate. Sprawling across two zip codes, with a golf course for every day of the month, two downtowns, its own newspaper, radio, and TV station, The Villages is a prefab paradise for retired Baby Boomers, where “not having children around seems to free [them] to act like adolescents” (The New York Times). In the critically acclaimed Leisureville, Blechman delves into this senior utopia, offering a hilarious firsthand report on everything from ersatz nostalgia to the residents’ surprisingly active sex life. Blechman also traces the history of this phenomenon, travelling to Arizona to find out what pioneering developments like Sun City and Youngtown have become after decades of segregation. Blending incisive social commentary and colorful reportage, “Blechman describes this brave new world with determined good humor and considerable bemusement” (Katherine A. Powers, The Boston Globe).

Much of the history written about the Vietnam War overlooks the U.S. Marine Corps Combined Action Platoons. These CAPs lived in the Vietnamese villages, with the difficult and dangerous mission of defending the villages from both the National Liberation Front guerrillas and the soldiers of the North Vietnamese Army. The CAPs also worked to improve living conditions by helping the people with projects, such as building schools, bridges, and irrigation systems for their fields. In War in the Villages, Ted Easterling examines how well the CAPs performed as a counterinsurgency method, how the Marines adjusted to life in the Vietnamese villages, and how they worked to accomplish their mission. The CAPs generally performed their counterinsurgency role well, but they were hampered by factors beyond their control. Most important was the conflict between the Army and the Marine Corps over an appropriate strategy for the Vietnam War, along with weakness of the government of the Republic of South Vietnam and the strategic and the tactical ability of the North Vietnamese Army. War in the Villages helps to explain how and why this potential was realized and squandered. Marines who served in the CAPs served honorably in difficult circumstances. Most of these Marines believed they were helping the people of South Vietnam, and they served superbly. The failure to end the war more favorably was no fault of theirs.

Fresh out of University, young Tim Ramsay is ready to make his mark in the world. Desperate for work, he agrees to take on the low-paying thankless job of researcher for Lonesome Charley Productions -- an indendant film company putting together the definative historical documentary of Hitler's Blitz on London during WWII. Before the movie is anywhere near completion, Lonesome Charley's boss, along with his secretary, disappear without a trace. Poor Tim finds himself holding the bag, with television sponsors, bill collectors, and the police all crawling down his neck for money and explanations -- neither of which Tim has. Determined to track down his boss, Tim sets out on a search that will take him from England to Poland, where he'll stumble upon a remarkable life-altering secret in places known only as... The Villages.

Judith Ann Trolander has written a history of the 'active adult' lifestyle. Examining the origins, development, failures, and challenges facing these communities as the baby boomer population continues to age, she offers a truly original defence of a sometimes controversial aspect of American life.