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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 its future.

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 eras—or “turnings”—that last about twenty years and that always arrive in the same order. In The Fourth Turning, the authors illustrate these cycles using a brilliant analysis of the post-World War II period.

First comes a High, a period of confident expansion as a new order takes root after the old has been swept away. Next comes an Awakening, a time of spiritual exploration and rebellion against the now-established order. Then comes an Unravelling, an increasingly troubled era 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. Together, the four turnings comprise history’s seasonal rhythm of growth, maturation, entropy, and rebirth.

The Fourth Turning offers bold predictions about how all of us can prepare, individually and collectively, for America’s next rendezvous with destiny.

Reviews

“I put down The Fourth Turning with a mixture of terror and excitement….If Strauss and Howe are right, they will take their place among the great American prophets.”

–David Kaiser, Boston Globe

“One of the best efforts to give us an integrated vision of where we

are going.”

–Wall Street Journal

“A startling vision of what the cycles of history predict for the future.”

–USA Weekend

From the Back Cover – The postwar High, then the Awakening of the ’60s and ’70s, and now the Unravelling. 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 unravelling 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.

About the Authors – 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.