cover image The First Year: A Retirement Journal

The First Year: A Retirement Journal

John Mosedale. Crown Publishing Group (NY), $22 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-517-58641-9

In 1991, after a long career as a television journalist, Mosedale ( The Men Who Invented Broadway ) retired: ``I walked out of CBS Studio 47 for the last time as a worker there and headed into a future that no longer defined itself in a newsroom.'' As captured in this entertaining journal, his life in the succeeding years reveals a man at peace with himself and appreciative of the gifts of home and family. No longer pressured by writing deadlines for such commentators as Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather, Mosedale took time to peruse the side streets of New York City, to indulge his passions for Shakespeare and opera, often with his companionable wife, and to retreat occasionally to a beloved cabin on a Minnesota island. Candid about his arrested alcoholism, Mosedale's journal exudes the contentment of a man who finds ``family and friends are the part of life you do not retire from.'' (June)