Synopsis

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.

Review

The Fourth Turning: What the Cycles of History Tell Us about America’s Next Rendezvous with Destiny by William Strauss

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Super interesting. Are we in the Fourth Turning? I enjoyed it as an audiobook, narrated by Neil Howe, who was quite enjoyable to listen to. I think anyone who enjoys philosophy, US and world politics and economics, and interested in a general outlook on the state of human behavior and the environment in which we live in, will enjoy this one.

The Story
Explores the rise and passing of eras and generational archetypes. I find myself really appreciating outlooks and review on humanity and books published before the 21st Century nowadays.

Trust, hardship. Consequence.

Seasons numerically.

Foreshadow of social behavior and world events.

It’s an interesting take on moral decay deconstruction of societal change of both the individual and community.

Quite thoughtful in the exploration of patterns of social behavior and response as it relates to times of prosperity, discourse, and war.

The Writing
Conversational like. Straightforward explanations.

The organization chronologically and arrangement of topics sometimes felt a bit repetitive, maybe purposefully duplicated, but I’m not sure how it could be reorganized without losing direction and main topics of interest other than categorizing by generational turning in isolation of themselves.

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