The Fourth Turning: What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny Kindle Edition

After many instances of prodding from readers, I finally bought and read The Fourth Turning, and I'm sorry that I waited so long. It was a superb read, and it puts into words (340 pages of words, in fact) the general feeling I've had for so long that something big and bad is happening all around us.I want to emphasize at the outset that this isn't some doom 'n' gloom book that came off the presses after all the calamities we've seen over the past decade. It is, in fact, a fifteen-year old book, and I imagine much of it was written around 1995 or so, during the feel-good Clinton years. When the book came out in 1997, the authors made clear that they were currently in the Third Turning, and that the Fourth Turning - the final quarter of a cycle that they postulate recurs throughout modern human history - was coming around 2005 or so.Strauss and Howe write:Over the past five centuries, Anglo-American society has entered a new era - a turning - every two decades or so....Together the four turnings of the saeculum comprise history's seasonal rhythm of growth, naturation, entropy, and destruction:+ The First Turning is a High; an upbeat era of strengthening instutitions and weakening individualism;+ The Second Turning is an Awakening, a passionate era of spirtual upheaval, when the civic order comes under attack from a new values regime;+ The Third Turning is an Unraveling, a downcast era of strrengtening individualism and weakening institutions;+ The Fourth Turning is a Crisis, a decisive era of secular upheaval, when the values regime propels the replacement of the old civic order with a new one.As they anticipated the next "Turning", they referenced its start point around 2005, in the middle of the "Oh-Oh" decade (which I've now heard referred to as the "Naughts"):The next Fourth Turning is due to begin shortly after the new millenium, midway through the Oh-Oh decade. Around the year 2005, a sudden spark will catalyze a Crisis mood...Political and economic trust will implode...severe distress that could involve questions of class, race, nation, and empire...the very survival of the nation will feel at stake. Sometime before the year 2025, America will pass through a great gate in history, commensurate with the American Revolution, Civil War, and twin emergencies of the Great Depression and World War II.I would suggest, and I'm sure many would agree, that the attacks of 9/11 were the "sudden spark". Early in the book, the authors describe how there have, through human history, been three general ideas about the path of time in our lives - chaotic, cyclical, linear. The entire basis of the book is that the cyclical perception of the world is the accurate one, and the human species continues to move its way through this quartet of cycles, totalling about the length of a human life, called a Saeculum. We are presently in The Millennial Saeculum, which is broken down into these four parts:+ The American High (1946-1964);+ The Consciousness Revolution (1964-1984);+ The Culture Wars (1984-2005?);+ The Millennial Crisis (which, when the book was published, was yet to arrive)If you consider the four quarters of a Saeculum to the time "axis" of the grid, the other is made of the human archetypes, whose character depends on their generation as well as what portion of the Saeculum is currently running. The present archetypes are described as follows:+ The Boom Generation (Prophet archetype, born 1943-1960);+ The 13th Generation (Nomad archetype, born 1961-1981);+ The Millennial Generation (Hero archetype, born 1982-?);+ The Artist archetype is being born nowI'm a member of what they dub the 13th Generation, so-called simply because it is the 13th generation of Americans that they track.Many of the predictions about the near-future that were offered are eerily accurate, whereas others are embarassingly wrong, such as the supposition that, to celebrate the year 2000, "Others will board a chartered Concorde just after midnight and zoom back through time from the third millennium to the second." Of course, I can't fault the authors for not anticipating the fiery end of the Concorde fleet!I am, of course, most interested in the Crisis era, since that is supposedly what we're in the midst of living; the authors declare the Crisis can be constructed with this morphology:+ A Crisis era begins with a catalyst - a startling event (or sequence of events) that produces a sudden shift in mood+ Once catalyzed, a society achieves a regeneracy - a new counter-entropy that reunifies and reenergizes civic life.+ The regenerated society propels toward a climax - a crucial moment that confirms the death of the old order and birth of the new.+ The climax culminates in a resolution - a triumphant or tragic conclusion that separates the winners from losers, resolves the big public questions, and establishes the new orderHere again, I would think most would agree the 9/11 attacks would serve the definition of "catalyst" quite well. As the book draws to a close, it delves into greater detail about what could be forthcoming from the perspective of someone writing in 1997. I've emphasized a few items in bold:Sometime around the year 2005, perhaps a few years before or after, America will enter the Fourth Turning.....a spark will ignite a new mood...In retrospect, the spark might seem as ominous as a financial crash, as ordinary as a national election, or as trivial as a Tea Party......the following circa-2005 scenarios might seem plausible:+ A global terrorist group blows up an aircraft and announces it possesses portable nuclear weapons......Congress declares war.....Opponents charge that the president concocted the emergency for political purposes.+ An impasse over the federal budget reaches a stalemate. The President and Congress both refuse to back down, triggering a near-total government shutdown.....Congress refuses to raise the debt ceiling. Default looms. Wall Street panics.As superb as these projections were, the authors hasten to add - ironically - "It's highly unlikely that any one of these scenarios will actually happen." On the contrary, these guesses about the future (which, let's face it, required the authors to really go out on a limb) were excellent. They continue (although I am using ellipses to replace large chunks of text, since I'm not in the mood to re-type an entire book):Time will pass, perhaps another decade, before the surging mood propels America to the Fourth Turning's grave moment of opportunity and danger: the climax of the Crisis.....the molten ingredients of the climax, which could include the following:+ Economic distress, with public debt in default, entitlement trust funds in bankruptcy, mounting poverty and unemployment, trade wars, collapsing financial markets, and hyperinflation (or deflation)+ Social distress....+ Cultural distress......+ Technology distress, with cryptoanarchy, high-tech oligarchy, and biogenetic chaos+ Ecological distress....+ Political distress....+ Military distress.......This is a thoughtful, well-articulated, and engrossing book. As with any text that makes broad sociological assertions and generalizations, the authors have opened themselves up to plenty of criticism about the plausibility of their prophecy. Taken as a whole, I think this book provide an enlightening blueprint of both the present and the near-future. I strongly recommend it.

This book is a follow-up to an earlier book by the same authors, called "Generations". I'd recommend reading both, starting with "Generations". There's a lot of overlap between the two; but each of them has a somewhat different focus. "Generations" gives more of a "big picture" view of the subject, whereas "The Fourth Turning" focuses more on the implications of the ideas first laid out in "Generations". It's possible to follow the argument presented in "The Fourth Turning" without having first read "Generations"; but you'll understand it a lot better if you read "Generations" first. If you don't want to read both books, then I'd have to recommend reading "Generations" instead of this, since it provides a more comprehensive treatment of the subject. But both are worth reading.Both books deal with essentially the same subject: the impact of generational change on the course of American history. "Generations" is basically a history of America viewed from a generational perspective. "The Fourth Turning" uses this generational approach to understanding history as a launching point for an examination of where America is heading in the not-too-distant future. The authors' basic thesis is that each generation has its own particular outlook on life -- its own set of shared values and priorities -- that distinguishes it from the generations that immediately precede it. As each generation comes of age and begins to take over the social roles once occupied by its elders, it brings a new agenda to the table. When this happens, old norms and policies get discarded in favor of new ways of doing things. Therefore, generational change is what drives social change.The controversy surrounding these two books stems from two aspects of the authors' thesis: First, they believe they can explain, and even predict, the changes in attitude that occur from one generation to the next. Second, they propose that these changes occur in regular cycles, which implies that history is, at least to some degree, cyclical. It's a fascinating idea, but one that makes many historians and social scientists uncomfortable. Historians generally reject the notion that history follows any sort of pattern than can be predicted ahead of time. Social scientists, on the other hand, are all about looking for historical patterns, and trying to use those patterns as the basis for prediction; but they know from experience how easy it is to see nonexistent "patterns" in random data, and how tempting it can be to cherry pick data points to fit a hypothesized "pattern" that's not really there. The historical "pattern" that the authors identify in these two books is fascinating, and may actually be real; but the evidence presented to substantiate the authors' thesis is just not sufficient to be scientifically persuasive. But that doesn't mean that it's wrong. All it means is that we can't be sure that it's right.Nonetheless, right or wrong, it's an interesting idea that's worth exploring; and it may even prove useful. At the very least, it will challenge how you view history and how you think about the future. In my view, that alone makes these two books worth reading.

This book has a lot of great information about what’s going on now and it looks at history and how history is repeating itself. We get to know where we are in society now and where we’re going.

Sometimes a well researched book is hard to understand. This is probably the most academic material I've read in several years; however, it is so well explained the concepts are easy to grasp.As a retired history teacher I wished I'd had this point of view to present as an option to my students as a way to understand the passage of time. High schoolers are often overwhelmed with the "bigness: of the subject--The Fourth Turning provides a really interesting perspective on understanding the repetitions in time and history.

This is an incredibly stimulating read. The research that has gone into producing this book is exceptional. Definitely lots of pertinent lessons for us at a city, provincial, national and federal level. Impacts us all worldwide. A definite read if you are a political science and history lover

I got this book to help me put these uniquely troubled times into perspective. I got more than that. It helped me make sense of my place in this world as an alienated, bewildered "nomad" who had wondered if i had imagined the world that was so different.

Livro fantástico sobre os ciclos da história. Poderia ter sido escrito ontem. Muito atual e esclarecedor.

Erg Amerikaans georiënteerd. Had er meer van verwacht.

I don't know much about history but I think it helps us understand how we grow as a society through the years and what we can do to improve our lives.