The Fourth Turning

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • "A startling vision of what the cycles of history predict for the future."-USA Weekend
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 Unraveling, 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.

William Strauss and Neil Howe are the authors of Generations: The History of America's Future and 13th-GEN and founding partners of the consulting firm, LifeCourse Associates. Strauss was a renowned speaker, writer, historian, and playwright. He was also the co-founder of the Capitol Steps, a political cabaret. Howe is a historian and economist who speaks frequently on generations, the economy, and social change. He is also the managing director of demography at Hedgeye, president of Saeculum Research, and a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Global Aging Institute. Howe lives in Great Falls, Virginia.