Microtrends by Mark J Penn and E Kinney Zalesne

Penguin €14.90
JUST days ago Microtrends - published this time last year but still sailing off the shelves of airport bookshops - seemed like an amusing analysis of a stable, static world. No more.
Microtrends authors Mark Penn and Kinney Zalesne write about " the emerging counterintuitive trends that are shaping tomorrow right before us".
Penn - advisor to Microsoft, the Clinton, Tony Blair and Bill Clinton - and lawyer and former Janet Reno counsel Zalesne chose 75 'microtrends' on how US society is going.
Or was going until the rolling economic crash of the last fortnight.
They said five million Americans aged 65 or over were still working, almost twice as many as in the 1980s, and added "That number is about to explode."
It certainly is, now that the comfortable pension you've earned is dissolving before your eyes.
'Old New Dads' who father children in late middle age were surely a boomer luxury.
The 'Sun-Haters', who spawned an industry of sun-proof clothes and sunscreen, may disappear now that there are more immediate dangers to fear.
How charmingly historic 'International Home-Buyers' now seem.
'Militant Illegals', ' Extreme Commuters' and '30-Winkers' are features of a world full of work, with ballooning house prices.
The recent past is another country. They did things differently then.