I’m doing a lot of traveling these days — a talk in Las Vegas last week, a few days in Scottsdale before returning home, a quick trip to Minneapolis this week, etc. It is a interesting time but, truth be told, there are moments when I’d like to think about something other than retirement funding. For distraction, I pick up a couple of books. One is Kevin Phillips’ “American Theocracy,” a dissection of what has gone haywire politically and economically over the past six years, including how the U.S. now totters on vast layers of debt, from the personal to the national. While Phillips only touches on retirement funding issues per se, the book’s view of the future makes me nervous as a cat. But I finish it dutifully, eager to find respite in the other book I’m carrying, James L. Swanson’s “Manhunt,” the nonfiction thriller about the pursuit, capture, and demise of John Wilkes Booth. Terrific read, can’t put it down. And not a blessed word about variable annuities, pension funds, or Monte Carlo simulations. So here I am, it’s pre-dawn at the Phoenix Sky Harbor airport, I’m happily engrossed, a million miles from the moment. And I’m reading furiously, closing in on the end of the can’t-put-down book, have gotten right to part where the Union patrol has surrounded the tobacco barn where Booth has barricaded himself. Suddenly, my cell phone jangles me back to from April, 1865, to April, 2006. The caller is a producer from a national radio network. How she has found my cell number remains a mystery. Why she’s calling is not: this morning, even as Booth was being betrayed by his sorry-assed sidekick, the Wall Street Journal has run a short piece about a new Employee Benefit Research Institute survey. The survey reports that “many workers are counting on traditional pension plans to pay their bills in retirement, even though such plans are fast disappearing. Only 40% of working couples currently are covered by pension plans, but nearly two-thirds of surveyed workers — 61% — expect to get income from such a plan in retirement.” The story goes on to offer all kinds of other grim findings and expert opinions, such as how so many of us assume that we can comfortably live on 70% of our pre-retirement while the real Number, at least according to one quoted financial planner, is around 85%.

Do I have any comment? the friendly producer asks, explaining that her network is preparing a follow-up on the Journal piece. I comment best I can — haven’t had coffee yet — then set aside “Manhunt” for a more relaxed time.

That relaxed time, or so I was hoping, arrives a couple of days later. Airport again — O’Hare. Before cracking open “Manhunt,” I make the mistake of buying the New York Times. Shucky darn! (Midwest foul-mouth expression). On Page C7, there’s a story about how the financial services industry is trying to make friends with millions of “mass affluent” baby boomers who are in need of retirement planning. Again, lots of grim numbers and quotes, including this one from a senior exec at a big financial firm: “The typical working American is on track to replace just 56% of his income in retirement and that only one in five [will] retire with any retirement income plan.”

Nobody calls me for comment this time around. But I do feel obligated to put the Booth book back in my briefcase and work some of the data into a talk I’m to give in a few hours.

As for “Manhunt,” I just now finished it. Not to ruin the ending for you, but Booth got exactly what was coming to him. And so will a great many of us, if you believe everything you read in the papers.

I’m pleased to report that beginning this Tuesday, April 4, there will be a television campaign launched in support of the book — needless to say, quite uncommon for the book biz. The spots will run for about two weeks on Jim Cramer’s “Mad Money” program. This is yet another indication of how terrific Free Press has been throughout this experience, and I’m grateful to everyone there for their enthusiastic efforts. And THE NUMBER continues to resonate with readers — it’s currently #6 on the BusinessWeek list of bestselling business titles.

For most of us, retirement planning does not rank high as a preferred leisure time activity. And it certainly doesn’t qualify as a core competency. 4 out of 10 Americans say they’re saving nothing for the future. Only a tiny percentage has gone to the trouble to work up a financial plan. Of those who have, more than half admit they can’t remember what it said. Maybe it’s hard to concentrate, certainly hard to relax, with all the noise out there. For 76-million boomers, gerontological clocks tick louder and louder. And, day after day, the alarm bells sound, with wakeup calls ringing 24/7. 2006 is just three months old, but it’s shaping up as the Year of the Sleepless Night. Here’s a first-quarter recap:

January 1: The New Year brings with it two key retirement-related anniversaries, but only one, the wrong one, gets much attention. Airwaves are flooded with news that the boomers start to turn sixty in 2006. There are lots of on-camera interviews with leading-edgers, mostly depicted as vital and active, possessed of healthy teeth and gums, and (at least for now) razor-sharp recall of long-ago days filled with flower power and social conscience. An army of graying trailblazers marches by, determined not to go gently into the dusk of retirement, which is now called, more happily, downshifting. 60 is the new 40. Small comfort. The other retirement-related milestone, the important one, goes largely ignored as the Year of the Sleepless Night dawns. 2006 is also when the 401(k) plan turns 25 – yes, the new age of financial self-determination has been staring retirement planning in the face for a full quarter-century. Trouble is, nobody issued much of a press release back then, one that laid out in detail the fact that the retirement game was going to change, that the days of secure corporate pensions and rock-solid Social Security were numbered. Instead, back in 1981, Congress called the new-fangled 401(k)s “salary reduction plans,” not an especially good marketing handle. (Anybody want your salary reduced? — raise your hand.) It was a while before people caught on. When, and if, they finally signed up for them, many workers weren’t sure how to invest their hard-earned salary reductions. Some were sensible and relied on conventional wisdom, kept their eggs in separate and nicely allocated baskets. They did okay. Others, plenty of them, were too aggressive, and rode the tech boom till it busted. Others still were too timid with their salary reductions and, for their prudence, wound up trailing the cost of living. Then there were those unlucky enough to feather their nests with their own company’s stock.

January 5: IBM announces it is freezing the pensions of 120,000 U.S. employees, while making some enhancements to its – yep — 401(k) program. The Year of the Sleepless Night is less than a week old and it has already delivered retirement planning’s “tipping point,” according to a trade publication for accountants.

January 30: The U.S. Commerce Department issues a report that also gets plenty of play: Americans’ personal savings rate has fallen to minus .5 percent, lower than at any time since the Depression. Some economists try to discount the implications, pointing out that Commerce’s numbers don’t take into account a not insubstantial family piggy bank called home equity. As far as retirement goes, this piggy bank could well prove useful, provided boomers will indeed downsize when they eventually downshift: reign in their spending, pay off their debts, settle for one SUV, not three in the driveway, and set up house in a space about the size of their current media room. But the jury is out the boomers’ willingness or fortitude to volunteer for lifestyle relapse. Says the chief economist at Standard & Poor’s, “Americans … have the feeling that it is wimpish to save.”

February 7: General Motors, having lost nearly $9 billion in the run up to the Year of the Sleepless Night, announces that its major cost-reduction initiative will include capping the legacy health benefits for hundreds of thousands of retirees. Starting in 2007, retired workers at the company once famously known as Generous Motors will face higher monthly contributions, deductibles, and prescription drug costs. The U.A.W and millions of former G.M. employees are not amused, nor should they be surprised. Large companies started trimming these costs well before the Year of the Sleepless Night; small companies usually don’t offer retirement health benefits to begin with. Sleep? You gotta kidding. Says a white paper issued by a major financial services firm: “A couple retiring today at age 65 should plan on spending at least $190,000 out of pocket over the course of retirement.” The figure does not include paying for time in a nursing home, in which one out of two people now 65 will find themselves, at least for a while.

April 1: You won’t read it in the paper but it’s a fact: Today is the first day of the new rest of your life. Don’t touch that snooze button. It’s time to get up, get up, you sleepy heads.