In more than four hundred interviews with retired and soon-to-retire professors, Lorraine Dorfman uses a case study method to convey the diversity of individual retirement experiences. In doing so, she provides a fuller picture of academic retirement. Her book addresses basic issues in the retirement process, including topics such as preparation for retirement, choosing where to live after retirement, evaluation of the retirement experience, and activity patterns during retirement. Retired professors describe both their professional activities, such as teaching, research, and consulting, their nonprofessional and leisure activities, and their strategies for successful retirement.

Based on more than a decade of interviews with retired and retiring professors in the United States and the United Kingdom, Dorfman's study relies on both tape-recorded responses to open-ended questions as well as answers to a written questionnaire. The interviews included professors from a large public research university, three liberal arts colleges, a comprehensive university (all located in the Midwest), and two civic universities in the U.K.

The Sun Still Shone is the first book to provide comparative information on academics from different kinds of institutions in a cross-national context; it also provides comparisons based on academic discipline, gender, and age.