Michel Godet, economist, is vice-president of the MMA Foundation for Entrepreneurs of the Future and a member of the Academy of Technologies. He is known as author of Bonnes Nouvelles des Conspirateurs du futur (Good News from the Conspirators of the Future), La France des bonnes nouvelles (The France of Good News) et Libérez l’emploi (Liberate Employment).
Marc Mousli is an economics journalist, notably for Alternatives économiques (Economic Alternatives). He leads seminars for companies on the topics of foresight and innovation.

In this book we follow the life paths of seventeen people who entered working life during the Glorious Thirty, from very different circumstances: provincial workers, a labour activist from Seine-St.Denis, a mining engineer and the greatest living French sociologist. All of them have passed the momentous age of retirement, but they refused to consider this precarious moment as a final departure on a very long vacation, persuaded, like Descartes, that "it is properly worth nothing to be useful to no one".
Everyone has found their own way. A boulevard for the sociologist Alain Touraine, who at over ninety still carries on thinking and writing at a steady pace. A less rectilinear way for others, diverted into rural works or culture and entertainment. Three-quarters of them devote themselves to various causes: crafts, the French army or the support of immigrants in Seine-Saint-Denis. None counts his hours. They are happy to share their experience with others — their village, France and an even wider intellectual community.