The Fourth Turning

Strauss and Howe apparently have devoted their lives to the study of history and the development of generations in societies. The book is loaded, and I mean, loaded with historical references, some of which I wasn't familiar with until now. By looking at these events, and more importantly, looking at the people that went along with those events, Strauss and Howe noticed some recurring patterns in generations over the centuries. Apply this pattern to our country, and to our future, they have correctly predicted that we are headed for a "Fourth Turning", a time of great criss and peril.

Normally, I shun books that people claim to have "visions of the future" involved with them. They are frequently erroneous and based on the whims of the author. However, "The Fourth Turning" is different. By basing their theories of the future on past events, they offer support and credence to their thoughts. The effect is both enlightening and chilling, but it is one that we simply cannot ignore.

I found every single page of their book fascinating as a study or recent history and future history. Also, I personally found self-enlightenment in reading about the generation in which I belong, the long lost "Gen X" crowd, or the title they label it, "13th". It explains a lot about the world in which I was raised, and the world we live in today.

One chilling fact: this book was written in 1997, and the authors predicts a calamatous and unimaginable event in the early part of the 2000s that would signify the start of the Fourth Turning. Who can read this book and not think of September 11th?

Don't delay. Read this book. We are entering a winter in our times, and those people prepared with that knowledge certainly will have a more steady base in the fourth turning to come.


A provacative and exciting look at the past and the future   January 28, 1997
27 out of 28 found this review helpful

(A version of this review appeared in The Boston Globe, which owns the rights. Please post it, just as you have posted excerpts from the New York Times review. Thank you.) Alas, in our age of professional specialization, one must look outside the academy for works of real originality and breadth. One such is The Fourth Turning, by William Strauss and Neal Howe, which shows how much more can be done with themes of rise, decline, birth, death, and change. Six years ago, in Generations, Strauss and Howe laid out a provacative and immensely entertaining outline of American history, based on a four-stage cycle of generations and historical periods. Now, in a somewhat shorter, more focused, and even more provocative sequel, they have recast their argument with an eye on the immediate future. There, they see an inspiring, chilling era of tragedy and triumph. The "fourth turning" to which their title refers is nothing less than a national crisis on the scale of the American Revolution, the Civil War, or the Depression and the Second World War--and they expect it to break out sometime during the next decade. That crisis will be the climax of the fourth great "saeculum" in American national life--a Latin word referring to the span of a normal long life, that is, between 80 and 100 years. Their argument can only be understood with reference to history, but space does not allow all four of the great cycles of American history to be laid out. We can, however, understand their view of the current saeculum--which began around 1964--by analogies with two previous, completed ones: the (somewhat accelerated) Civil War saeculum from about 1822 through 1886, and the Great Power saeculum from 1886 through 1963. Like every other saeculum, they argue, this one began with an Awakening--in this case, the consciousness revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, parallel to the Transcendental Awakening of the 1820s and 1830s, the father of abolitionism, and the Missionary Awakening of 1884-1908, which focused on social issues. All Awakening eras feature social activism among the young, increased substance abuse, and an emphasis on women's and minority rights. They are driven by young adults--most recently, the Baby Boomers--who are rebelling against the consensus of the "High" periods in which they grew up--the Jeffersonian high of roughly 1800-1820, the post-Civil War high of 1865-85, and, most notably, the "American high" of 1945-63, whose consensus atmosphere is so deeply missed by so many older Americans today. Awakenings, however, produce ideological ferment rather than ideological consensus, and lead directly not to the golden age foreseen by their youth, but rather to an Unraveling in which divisions over values become worse and worse, and the glue that holds society together rapidly weakens. Few will be inclined to dispute the authors'contention that we now find ourselves in an "Unraveling" that began around 1984, parallel to the pre-civil war crisis of 1844-61 and the turbulent era of 1908-29. Both these periods were marked by a general loosening of moral standards and a strong backlash in response, a splitting of the electorate along religious, ethnic and racial lines, an increasingly contentious tone in politics, an explosion in crime, a growth in votes for third parties, and an outburst of nativism in response to new immigration. Sound familiar? Another political parallel is equally chilling. From the 1830s through the early 1850s, the great "Compromise Generation" of Webster and Clay held things together until the eve of the Civil War. Their present-day generational counterpart are the Silent Generation (born 1926 through 1942), who have generally played a conciliatory political role, but who have never made it to the White House and are now (Nunn, Cohen, Heflin, et al) fleeing the Congress in droves, leaving national leadership to the more contentious Baby Boomers. Indeed, the authors openly hope for a more conciliatory Silent President in 2000, perhaps to postpone the crisis for a few more years and give us time to prepare. Unravelings have always had interesting effects within American homes, the authors also argue, and here, too, contemporary history is bearing them out. The generations with the most difficult childhoods are born during Awakenings and grow up during unravelings: the Gilded generation that then had to fight the Civil War, the Lost Generation (born 1883-1900 according to the authors, although this historian would move the latter date to about 1905), and now, Generation X, whom Strauss and Howe prefer to call the Thirteenth generation, whose childhoods featured an explosion of divorce, abortion, drug use, crime, and a well-publicized erosion of educational standards. Yet even six years ago, the authors' first book suggested that something had changed dramatically around 1982, when society took a renewed interest in kids and movies began featuring cuddly infants rather than monsters like the Exorcist, Damien, or Rosemary's Baby. Now, of course, younger children have become the focus of the nation's political life, and their nurture and discipline has moved onto center stage of the national agenda. Boomers never asked their parents to help on their homerwork; Generation Xers had little homework to do; but the new generation of Millenials asks for, and gets, help on their assignments almost every night of the week. This is essential, as well as natural, the authors argue, because the Millenial generation will inherit the task of their "GI" grandparents and great-grandparents: that of dealing with the next great crisis. Like those born from 1905 through 1925, they will be team players, able to band together to handle any task during their youth (building dams in the 1930s and winning the Second World War in the 1940s), and carrying the same can-do attitude through their middle years (roughly 2023-45), which--provided they and their elders do successfully resolve the crisis--will be the scene of another great American high of confidence, rebuilt infrastructure, and stable families. Nothing lasts forever, though, and when new and troubling events disturb the consensus, the children of the new High will begin a new awakening, and aging Generation Xers and midlife millenials will finally see what their parents went through in the famous 1960s first hand. The authors trust in history, ancient as well as modern. They bluntly acknowledge at the beginning of the book that they are rejecting at least two centuries of western thought by proposing a cyclical rather than a linear concept of time, but they find additional confirmation of their thesis in the Iliad, the books of Exodus and Joshua, and above all in Ecclesiastes, which they use to open and close their work. In a sense, they are trying to reconnect the present to the real classical tradition, and they do so far more effectively than Alan Bloom or William Bennett, who have simply raided that tradition to make their own linear, unraveling-era points. And if they turn out to be wrong, I would suggest, this, too will mean that the United States, and perhaps human society, has fundamentally changed: that our regimented, globally dependent and media-driven society is no longer capable of translating rhetoric into action, either for bad or for good. The Fourth Turning is weakest on the point of greatest practical interest: what, exactly, the new crisis is likely to involve. They present a series of scenarios combining, in various ways, a financial crisis, a collapse of federal authority, a racial or regional civil war, or an international crisis perhaps involving terrorism, but none of them seems completely convincing. Yet here, too, history is on their side. No one in the 1760s would have predicted the American Revolution; almost no one in 1928 would have foreseen either Depression or World War. Only in th


Troubling but crucially important   August 12, 2006
William Pinches (Mason, MI USA)
21 out of 21 found this review helpful

Strauss and Howe offer an analysis of the past 500 years of Western civilization, through the lens of generational dynamics. They are repeating (and condensing) some of their prior work in Generations, and putting more emphasis on our present reality. The authors posit that there is a four-generation cycle that has repeated itself time and time again over the past five centuries. Every fourth generation, there is a massive upheaval -- the American Revolution, the Civil War, and World War II being the most recent examples. They argue that we are due for the next massive crisis by about 2020 to 2025, and that all the signs of disintegration of society we see around us are patterns that have existed in the periods prior to the massive upheavals of the past. I found this book to be a page-turner; I found it incredibly difficult to put down.

If you're a church leader, read this book in conjunction with Mike Regele's book The Death of the Church, which is grounded, in large part, on the work of Strauss and Howe.


Puts History, and the near future in a clear perspective   June 4, 2000
Robert Reed (St. Louis, MO United States)
30 out of 33 found this review helpful

This is one of the most important books about history that was ever written. This introduces an ancient concept of cyclic time, and makes it new again. The sub-title "An American Prophecy" might be a little misleading when you read the book, but that's only because of reader's expectations. Many people are expecting a Nostradamus type prediction of the future piece by piece. That's not what this book is about, and they clearly state it in the book. This book is about the cycles of time, and how they have affected past events, and what they tell us about the future. One reviewer on this website has called this work "New Age Astrology." That reviewer is very closed-minded. He makes prejudical statements about the book, and one wonders if he read the whole thing. This book is FAR from astrology because astrology depends upon blind faith to succeed. This book succeeds not because of blind faith in some New Age religion, but because of its nearly perfect track record. The authors of these books have realized that American society goes through cycles of time. These cycles have been nearly precise, and are subject to anonalies, but this book succeeds because history shows that many of the events in America happen over and over again. Also the events that happened between 1946 and today are shown to have a historical precedence, and this is made clear. The proof is in our history. If you want proof, ask people in society, and consult historical sources, and you will come to the same conclusion. So far, when talking to many people in society, this book has not failed me once. This is proof enough about the authenticity of this book. The same review said that this book disregards all of the scientific, technological, and intellectual advancements. I my analysis of this book the author misses many of these developments because they are unnecessary. The book shows that no matter what comes along, they, too, are subject to the cycles of time, and a historical analysis of technologies such as cars, radios, television, and of social movements such as feminism, civil rights, and new age religions prove this very point. The authors merely say that circular and linear time are equally important, and that they actually help the other. I recommend this book to anyone who cares about the future, and of this nation. The historical events have repeated themselves throughout history, and why should today be any different? We are not more special than the other generations who had to go through the seasons of time. Each time I read the book, it gets better because I get more and more from it, and therefore, am able to fit the theory into actual and historic life. If you doubt this book, go seek info from primary sources, be they your children, friends, peers, parents, grand-parents, or grand-children, and you will see how right this book is. I will reiterate that the point of this book is not predicting the EXACT future, but the RELATIVE future, which will be enough to get us through the Fourth Turning successfully. Anyone who is familiar with Chaos Theory know that predicting the exact future is impossible, because the individual parts in continous flux, but the the relative future can be foretold because the behavior of the whole is predictable. If you use this book correctly and wisely, you will gain an amazing amount of insight about the past generations, the future generations, and your place in ths history of this nation. If you use this piece of work incorrectly, you will not gain from this. Plus knowing that a crisis is coming, and trying to figure out what it will be is much more fun and intriguing than if you already knew exactly the details of the next crisis, don't you think?


Charting my generation into the Crisis   October 17, 2001
Michael McSwain (Chapel Hill, NC)
22 out of 24 found this review helpful

Some people have claimed reading this book is a waste of time and have compared the Strauss and Howe theory to "a very flaky, new-agey" prophecy. But since September 11th, this book has been in a heap of debate over whether it really gives an accurate theory. As a member of the Millennial generation, I have found the book to be the single-most original and insightful commentary on history and society.

Some people think the theory makes false generational characterizations and charge the authors with not providing evidence to make such generalizations. First off, theories are designed to make sense of the world. They are based on historical trends, statistics, and years of intellectual discussion. This theory does not directly dictate how a teenager in Illinois may live her life, but it does provide a much more credible account of things to come in her life than she could have possibly imagined herself.

It is insensitive and politically incorrect to suggest that the events of September 11th were "predictable." I do not think that the theory makes any indication that it was predictable; however, the way people are reacting to those events DOES support the theory. The thing that makes this occasion unique compared to major tragic events of the eighties or nineties is that the mood of the nation has changed. That mood, as the theory suggests, is propelled by the alignment of generations right now. As the generations move closer towards this alignment, more characteristics that Strauss and Howe have established will become more visible, and we will begin to see the impending crisis. What we are seeing right now is that 92% of Americans are in support of war and in support of the Bush administration. Nothing like that would have ever happened during the eighties or nineties.

As far as my generation goes, I'm sure there are trends that have happened that the authors didn't consider or that were unpredictable. But figures such as the media really have made us everything we think we aren't. Even MTV, the network of "individualism," has been our prime influence of conformity in the music scene. Media has, directly or indirectly, encouraged us to be cooperative, dutiful, and optimistic. This form of passive commercialism has been shoved down our throats, and the fact that we don't even notice it demonstrates how conditioned we've become to accept what we are told.

Since 1991, Strauss and Howe have accurately predicted the mood of the nation. Their theory is also supported by 400 years of American history. I would highly suggest this book to anyone, even skeptics, as an invaluable analysis of the American landscape.