Invitation to the Life Course: Toward New Understandings of Later Life discusses in depth the challenges of age, time, and social contexts for the study of aging and later life. Understanding aging (as a process) and later life (as a period) must be accompanied by serious attention to the life course. This brings significant challenges related to time, as gerontologists must describe and explain life patterns over many decades. It also brings significant challenges related to place, as gerontologists must examine how social contexts structure pathways into and through later life, and how those contexts affect the nature and meaning of experiences along the way. This book is a natural extension of the editor's previous work, "Lives in Time and Place: The Problems and Promises of Developmental Science" (Baywood, 1999).