The Fourth Turning: What the Cycles of History Tell Us about America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny - Paperback

by William Strauss (Author), Neil Howe (Author)

NATIONAL BESTSELLER - Discover the game-changing theory of the cycles of history and what past generations can teach us about living through times of upheaval--with deep insights into the roles that Boomers, Generation X, and Millennials have to play.

First comes a High, a period of confident expansion. Next comes an Awakening, a time of spiritual exploration and rebellion. Then comes an Unraveling, in which individualism triumphs over crumbling institutions. Last comes a Crisis--the Fourth Turning--when society passes through a great and perilous gate in history.

William Strauss and Neil Howe will change the way you see the world--and your place in it. With blazing originality, The Fourth Turning illuminates the past, explains the present, and reimagines the future. Most remarkably, it offers an utterly persuasive prophecy about how America's past will predict what comes next.

Strauss and Howe base this vision on a provocative theory of American history. The authors look back five hundred years and uncover a distinct pattern: Modern history moves in cycles, each one lasting about the length of a long human life, each composed of four twenty-year eras--or "turnings"--that comprise history's seasonal rhythm of growth, maturation, entropy, and rebirth. Illustrating this cycle through a brilliant analysis of the post-World War II period, The Fourth Turning offers bold predictions about how all of us can prepare, individually and collectively, for this rendezvous with destiny.

Front Jacket

First came the postwar High, then the Awakening of the '60s and '70s, and now the Unraveling. This audacious and provocative book tells us what to expect just beyond the start of the next century. Are you ready for the Fourth Turning?
Strauss and Howe will change the way you see the world--and your place in it. In "The Fourth Turning, they apply their generational theories to the cycles of history and locate America in the middle of an unraveling period, on the brink of a crisis. How you prepare for this crisis--the Fourth Turning--is intimately connected to the mood and attitude of your particular generation. Are you one of the can-do "GI generation," who triumphed in the last crisis? Do you belong to the mediating "Silent Majority," who enjoyed the 1950s High? Do you fall into the "awakened" Boomer category of the 1970s and 1980s, or are you a Gen-Xer struggling to adapt to our splintering world? Whatever your stage of life, "The Fourth Turning offers bold predictions about how all of us can prepare, individually and collectively, for America's next rendezvous with destiny.

Author Biography

William Strauss and Neil Howe, the authors of Generations: The History of America's Future and 13th-GEN, write and lecture frequently on generational issues. Strauss is the cofounder and director of the Capitol Steps, a political cabaret. Howe, a historian and economist, is a senior advisor for the Concord Coalition. They both live in the Washington, D.C., area.