Thought provoking. IS this an insight into predestination? We now live at the end of the fourth turning. What were its defining events and stresses? The economic meltdown of 2007? The war in Afghanistan? The Ukraine war? The smartphone? Artificial intelligence?
Certainly there seems more fear of civil war in America than any time in living memory. There is even a movie about it. Perhaps that makes it less likely. IS Biden our gray eminence? Certainly he IS gray. IS he seen as pointing the way to a new future based on self sacrifice? History will judge that. IS artificial intelligence the stepping stone into a new future for our society? There is Michael being written now about limits to free will. ( )

NF

theory of historical cycles based on changing constellations of generational types

Fascinating especially in light of sept 11, 2001 ( )

Jeepers! Scared the bejeezus out of me. This is a horror movie masquerading as a book. Written in 1997(!), coins the term millennials, predicts Trump and forecasts a third world war (but hopefully just a financial one) in the 2020s time frame. But don't worry, you have no place to hide and furthermore, you're guaranteed a front row seat to the show. Enjoy. ( )

The mystery of why things happened and when they happened in American History always seemed blank in various studies and classes…Just numbers and names and little compelling detail as to the causes of events.

This book applies sociology in a new way. First read in 1998, much of its premise seemed implausible to others, but to me it made a lot of sense…The jury was still out on the future, but the events of American History explained in the context of the saeculum and its generational counterparts made for a lot of good conversations. Cultures and generational cohorts that were altered in their very beings by the course of history’s major events…The Heroes, The Silents, The Profits and the Lost…Just like Rome, repeating time and again…

Then came 911 and the new stages of a 20 year turning. How will the crisis turn out this time? The book has some thoughts…A must read book then and now…

In this exceptional book the authors take a life-cycle view of human affairs that is analogous to the four seasons. A complete cycle repeats and runs through four quarters ; Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter with each season serving a purpose.

Since working together in the mid 1980's they became convinced by evidence that human societies follow a cyclical generational pattern rather than one of unbroken linear growth. The evidence is that societies grow, reach a maturity, stagnate and decline, with their particular angle being that generations can be counted from a time of major crisis with four generations (human life cycles) needed to complete the full cycle.

They show that "Ever Upwards", "Always More", "Always Better" are useful political slogans that really don´t apply to human affairs other than in a narrow technological sense. Societal awareness of its success/performance/happiness is not an arrow shooting ever upwards but rather an arrow that is shot upwards only to fall to earth and (usually) be fired again to follow a similar but different arc.

In American terms they see the present cycle as starting with a post WWII "American High" (1946-1964)(Spring), followed by a "Consciousness Revolution" (1964-1984)(Summer) and "Culture Wars" (1984-2005?)(Autumn) with a Winter on the way that should cover the approximate period of 2005- 2025. As in nature, each season has its possibilities and they identify Crisis (Winter) as a time for societal survival, demanding a genuine gathering together in unselfish common action.

Each generation interestingly defines itself in opposition to its childhood parents with "Boomer" children looking for societal order and stability rather than the splintering revolution that was forced onto them. Equally, they show each seasonality as having a dominant ethos that is almost impossible to resist, with the most interesting example probably being the capitulation of Conservatives under Reagan to "me first" individualism and personal freedom of a late stage Third Turning.

As they say, "Ideals become Ideologies" and an institutionalized revolution turns into a special interests power grab under the cover of a revolutionary smoke screen, i.e. Woodstock to Animal Farm with some revolutionaries being more equal than others. ( )

I've been following Neil Howe's insights for a couple years now and
read this to get their broader historical analysis. For as much as
their model has been criticized as inexact and unproven, I find it to
make a lot of sense. Their generational observations match
commonalities I've perceived for the same age groups. There are two
reasons I didn't rate this book higher. First, the last third of it is
prediction. We're about halfway throught the Fourth Turning. I see
signs of their predictions being right, but the full crisis and
emergence of heroes will require a longer test of time. I also found
the tone of the last portion to be too apocalyptic.

Howe and Strauss posit that history cycles through four turnings,
driven by a natural rhythm defined by human generations of
approximately 20 to 25 years. People react to the generations before
them, acting out the stories common to every era, such as the heroic
youth rising to meet the latest crisis, and the teenager rebelling
against their parent's conventions. The trends reverse themselves when
they become too extreme. The result is a cycle of four turnings: a
High of upbeat recovery and increasing civic order, an Awakening of
new spiritual values including criticism of the new regime, an
Unraveling where the order decays, and a Crisis where upheaval resets
the whole cycle again. This cycle has repeated itself in the New World
since its beginning. For example, the authors point to the American
Revolution, the Us Civil War, and the Great Depression as the most
recent Unravelings.

The respective generations born in each part of the cycle match an
archetype formed by the events that tend to unfold during the course
of their lives, and that they in turn reinforce throught their
reaction to these events. These four archetypes are: Prophet, Nomad,
Hero, and Artist. ( )

I approached this book initially very skeptically. My previous experience with "prophecy" was, as I vaguely recall, a book called "The Great Depression of the 1990's" or something like that. But the authors make a convincing case first, that each generation (they define generations in terms of contemporaries or cohorts) really does have a different character, and second, that this generational intermix would produce a major crisis in the U. S. sometime in the period 2005 - 2025. A social crisis is not when things, even bad things, happen to us. It is a crisis because of our reaction. Consider a catalog of the most recent crises: Bill Clinton’s impeachment, Watergate, the Vietnam War, Iran-Contra, or even September 11. These are not the kind of crises we are looking for, because they didn’t fundamentally change everything in the way that the American Revolution, the American Civil War, and the Great Depression and Second World War did.At the time of September 11, I didn't think that this event presaged the "Fourth Turning," and I still think this is the wrong event. I think that a future historian trying to follow Strauss and Howe's method will probably date this from 2005 (Katrina and peak oil?), 2008 (oil price spike and economic meltdown?), or 2010 (some new crisis). ( )

I first read this book in 1998. I took it off the shelf and read it again recently after listening to an interview with the author. It is eerie now to watch the cycle of history repeating much as the authors described.

Highly recommended. Much of the book is still relevant today. ( )

What the cycles of history tell us about America's next rendezvous with destiny.

Pretty well summed up by another reviewer. In their book "Generations" Strauss and Howe explain their generational theory. In "The Fourth Turning" they apply the theory to the near future of the United States. Their theory may certainly be challenged but the order that their theory extracts from American history is hard to resist. ( )

Two books are essential reading for those who wish to understand the theory of historical seasons and generational cycles. This theory is explained in the books The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy (Broadway Books) and Generations : The History of America's Future, 1584 to 2069 (William Morrow and Co.), both by William Strauss and Neil Howe.

The Short Cycle
Strauss and Howe’s writings concern short cycles in history. A short cycle or "saeculum" is a season of life that lasts 80 to 100 years. Within each cycle are four identifiable seasons dominated by one of four generational types: Civic, adaptive, idealist and reactive generations. In the 20th Century, these are known familiarly as the GI Generation (born between 1901 and 1924), the Silent Generation (1925-1942), Baby Boomers (1943-1960), Generation X (1961-1981) and the Millennials (the new civics, born after 1981. Also known as Generation Y). ( )