An Analysis of Big Ideas in The Fourth Turning

Published in 1997, The Fourth Turning, has emerged as one of the most important and controversial books of the past twenty years.  Building on the foundation laid in their earlier books Generations and 13th Gen, Neil Howe and William Strauss map out the crucial role of generational cohorts in history. 

Properly understood, this astonishing book enables you to see the world, and your place in it, in a new light.  With startling originality, Strauss and Howe illuminate the past, explain the present, and reimagine the future.  Most remarkably, they offer an utterly persuasive prophecy about the new American era that began just after the dawn of the millennium and continues to unfold to this day.

Strauss and Howe posit that American history is a succession of generational biographies, beginning in the fifteenth century and encompassing every generation since then. Their bold theory is that each generation belongs to one of four types, and that these types repeat sequentially in a fixed pattern. This vision allows us to plot a recurring cycle in American history—a cycle of spiritual awakenings and secular crises—from the founding colonists through the present day and well into the twenty-first century.

As Strauss and Howe explain, your life during this crisis and the exciting new era that will follow it, is intimately connected to the mood and attitude of your particular generation. 

This is a must listen program.