The Fourth Turning
Selected Book Details
- Paperback
- Author: William Strauss, Neil Howe
- Publisher: Broadway
- Release Date: December 1997
- ISBN-10: 0767900464
- ISBN-13: 9780767900461
- List Price: $17.99
Price Comparisons
E-mail these Cheap Book Prices to a friend!
| Store | Price | Condition | Free Shipping? | Online Coupons and Deals | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Half.com | $7.16 as of 3/20 11pm EST | Used | NO, $3.49 to $3.99 |
| |||
| Amazon | $7.55 as of 3/20 11pm EST | Used | NO, $3.99 |
| |||
| Alibris | $7.89 as of 3/20 11pm EST | Used | NO, $3.99 |
| |||
| Alibris | $9.04 as of 3/20 11pm EST | New | NO, $3.99 |
| |||
| Amazon | $9.05 as of 3/20 11pm EST | New | NO, $3.99 |
| |||
| Half.com | $9.75 as of 3/20 11pm EST | New | NO, $3.49 to $3.99 |
| |||
| Amazon | $12.23 as of 3/20 11pm EST | New | YES, spend $25+ |
| |||
| TextbookX | $12.95 as of 3/20 11pm EST | New | YES, spend $49+ |
| |||
| Alibris | $16.19 as of 3/20 11pm EST | New | YES, Spend $49+ on eligible books |
| |||
| button not working? Click Here | |||||||
Summaries and Customer Reviews provided by Amazon
SummaryThe Fourth Turning continues the project of mapping out the place of generations in history, a project begun in the authors' earlier books Generations and 13th Gen. If millennial fever takes hold, The Fourth Turning may be only the first of an impending wave of pseudo-scholarly tracts prognosticating future (but imminent!) doom as we collectively close the books on this millennium. Those expecting a serious or dry tome might be put off by the authors' taste for bulleted text and catchy phrasings, but can you blame these guys for wanting to make impending peril as exciting as possible? After all, they think we are headed toward "events on par with the Revolution, the Civil War, or World War II" in the next 20 years. Mixing solid understanding of present generational divisions, with some fairly broad generalizations, Strauss and Howe promise to move from history to prophecy. Fans of Future Shock, Megatrends, or Powershift will be familiar with the authors' style of writing and not at all put off by the book's reach or style. Their take on history provides an intriguing (if not always reliable) lens through which to view the past, present, and maybe even the future. |
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Generation Zero: Saecular Winter Forecast
Rating:
"America feels like it is unraveling.
Though we live in an era of relative peace and comfort, we have settled into a mood of pessimism about the long-term future, fearful that our superpower nation is somehow rotting from within." Chpt 1
This could have been written this morning (and probably was somewhere) but it was writted in 1997.
"Neither an epic victory over Communism nor an extended upswing of the business cycle [it's '97 remember] can buoy our public spirit. The Cold War and New Deal struggles are plainly over, but we are of no mind to bask in their successes. The America of today feels worse, in its fundamentals, than the one many of us remember from youth, a society presided over by those of supposedly lesser consciousness. Wherever we look, from L.A. to D.C., from Oklahoma City to Sun City, we see paths to a foreboding future. We yearn for civic character but satisfy ourselves with symbolic gestures and celebrity circuses. We perceive no greatness in our leaders, a new meanness in ourselves. Small wonder that each new election brings a new jolt, its aftermath a new disappointment."
The reason for this is we are in a saecular Autumn. Right now it's March 2010, and from today's news it seems indeed very late Autumn... 11:55pm Autumn... The linear history of the Modern Era, from Late Medieval to Present, contains circular rhythms of four turnings each. One rhythm, a saeculum, lasts as long as a long human life, 80-100 years. The turnings mark the 20-year intervals of the generations aging and moving through the 4 natural life stages, childhood, young adulthood, mid-life, elderhood. The turnings are unavoidably abrupt and usher in completely new national "moods" because new generations replacing the elder never fill the vacated role in the same way - they can't, the different set of experiences among the generations, and hence the tenor of their beliefs and motivations, are too different though they may hold core beliefs in common. "Before Kennedy was assasinated, no one predicted that America was about to enter an era of personal liberation and cross a cultural divide that would separate anything thought or said after from anything thought or said before. But that's what happened."
The current saeculum began in the post-WWII era which was a saecular Spring, optimistic, solidifying, growing. When the children born in Spring entered young adulthood Summer began, the 60s - early 80s, an Awakening, a wild ride, passionate, rebellious, grand moralizing. Now it's Autumn and the children born in the Summer are the young adults. Autumn is an unraveling, a harvest, Summer adults are "cashing out" and the fields are bare. It's "a downcast era of strenghtening individualism and weakening institutions, when the old civic order decays". It is now very late in this Autumn; young adults of this generation are beginning to enter mid-life and the children born in Autumn are becoming young adults. So what's next? Winter is coming.
This book is very convincing and, believe it or not, helpful and hopeful. Winter is unavoidable, alas necessary, and we can prepare for it. It is dangerous and unpleasant, deadly, but we need to face it. The weeds need clearing and old growth needs pruning so that the fresh healthy green can come back. "We percieve our civic challenge as some vast, insoluble Rubik's Cube. Behind each problem lies another problem that must be solved first, and behind that lies yet another, and another, ad infinitum. To fix crime we have to fix the family, but before we do that we have to fix welfare, and that means fixing our budget, and that means fixing our civic spirit, but we can't do that w/out fixing moral standards, and that means fixing schools and churches, and that means fixing inner cities, and that's impossible unless we fix crime. There's no fulcrum on which to rest a policy lever. People of all ages sense that something huge will have to sweep across America before the gloom can be lifted" - what a tangeled web we weave, and that's just the public policy point-of view!
The only way to clear the tangle and regenerate is through the Winter cycle. If there were another way we'd have surely made some progress on it given the intense focus on "what's wrong" over the last 20 years. "Values that were new in the 60s are today so entwined with social dysfunction and cultural decay that they can no longer lead anywhere positive. But in the crucible of Crisis, that will change. As the old civic order gives way, Americans will have to craft a new one. This will require a values consensus and, to administer it, the empowerment of a strong new political regime. If all goes well there could be a renaissance of civic trust, and more: Today's Third Turning problems - that Rubik's Cube of crime, race, money, family, culture, and ethics - will snap into a Fourth Turning solution. America's post-Crisis answers will be as organically interconnected as today's pre-Crisis questions seem hopelessly tangled."
Our culture, politics, economics, civil society are none other than hopelessly lamed, deformed and decayed. But that is not to say that eternal things are dying - The Constitution or The Bible or Plato. Rather it's the people and society, in relation to the eternal/transcendent, that are in need of regeneration. Nations can fall in a Winter. It will require sacrifice and trial. "History's howling storms can bring out the worst and best in a society, thus might the next Fourth Turning end in apocalypse - or glory." The only way is through. "The next Fourth Turning could literally destroy us as a nation and people, leaving us cursed in the histories of those who endure and remember. Alternatively, it could ennoble our lives, elevate us as a community, and inspire acts of consummate heroism." This book will explain and help.
More interesting things:
In this book, learn about your archetype. There are four: Prophets, Nomads, Heroes, Artists. Learn the strengths and weaknesses each bring to the challenge of their time.
The turnings have been going on throughout human history. It is in the Modern Era that they have been especially cataclysmic - why?
Be carefull of the authors political stance.
Rating:
The "wave theory", Is great. I agree with much the authors have to say on the subject, but their proposals on what
and how we deal with the crisis borders on violating the constitution and the amendments thereto. I feel these guys
are Boomer/socialists, leftover from the sixties. If anything will save this country, It is getting back to the Constitution not having the Courts violate our individual rights for the good of the communial society. This is exactly what we are fighting today.
An Important Analysis of American Society
Rating:
I read this book five years ago and it helps to explain the world we live in today. According to the author's theory the US operates on a 80 year cycle composed of four phases, High, Awakening, Unraveling, and Crisis. When a generation is born dramatically impacts their view the world. For instance:
Baby Boomers (1943-1960) were raised during a High and during this period the society believed children should be idealistic. Today's political environment is a by product of Baby Boomers idealism. There is no middle ground with Baby Boomers. This type of idealistic generation was in power during the Great Depression and WWII.
Generation X (1961-1981) was raised during an Awakening when the society began to lose faith in institutions. Generation X grew up during a period of high divorce rates, open classrooms, latch-key kids, etc. Generation X is very practical and has little faith in large institutions, or political parties. This generation is very self reliant (if you are a member of Generation X just think of the number of people you have met who tried to get rich investing in stocks, real-estate, or starting a business, even the entertainers of this generation are entrepreneurs, JLo, P Diddy, Kathy Ireland, Cindy Crawford, etc).
Generation Y(1982-2001) are a team orientated generation that believes by working together they can solve societies problems. This generation reaches young adulthood during a crisis and emerge as heroes after the crisis. This generation re-establishes the institutions the Baby Boomer type generation shook-up. All of the presidents from JFK to George H W Bush were members of this type of generation. Baby Boomers raised Generation Y.
The Silent Generation (1925-1942) was raised during the crisis and are heavily influenced by Baby Boomers. The generation that was raised during the last crisis produced no US presidents. The leaders of this generation have a lot of credentials and believe in the process. They are also the most affluent generation (the Silent Generation could find a well paying job with a high school diploma and retire with a pension). This is the generation that raised Generation X.
It is an interesting take on the world and very troubling because we are currently in a Crisis period (American Revolution, Civil War, the Great Depression and WWII) where the old civic order is replaced by a new one.
Brilliant
Rating:
I felt as though I were reading American history as I've experienced it. If you're interested in almost any trend in American history, this book is worth reading. The book was written several years before 9/11, which later marked the beginning of the fourth turning. It is fascinating to compare what the authors predicted in 1997 would happen during a fourth turning following a 9/11-type event, with what is actually happening.
Doesn't sound alarmist anymore.
Rating:
When I first started using The Fourth Turning by Strauss and Howe as a text, we lived in a pre-9/11 world. Frankly, most students seemed to read it like fantasy or fiction: an interesting concept, worth considering, but far from real. The younger the students, the more they usually focused on the personality-type sections of the book. And the older readers, if they were old enough to have lived through the Great Depression and World War II, talked a lot about the chapters on the Fourth Turning (crisis) and the next first turning (a new founding).
It was the middle generations, the Boomers and Generation X students (born between 1944 and 1985), who surprised me the most, however. They read it cynically, some believing intellectually that a fourth turning might be possible, but without expressing much emotion on the topic, while most were downright skeptical. They seemed to believe that the future will be like the past with little deviation, and by "past" they meant their own life experience of the last twenty to fifty years. Several got angry that I would assign such a book, "as if it has any validity in the real world!"
Ironically, this is just how the book predicts that these generations will act. But now it has all changed. Have anyone read the chapter on the crisis period, called "The Winter," and they'll likely be shocked by how prophetic this book has turned out to be. Funny, the subtitle actually proclaims that the work is a "prophecy". But the last few chapters of the book are now a manual on what's happening and what's likely ahead. I think almost everyone should read it closely. If you've already read it, I recommend a re-read!
For those still skeptical that 9/11 and the recession are just blips in history and who feel that we'll soon be back to booming business as usual, or who think that a new Presidential administration has brought lasting change that will spread and quickly solve our largest problems, I know exactly how you feel. Back in the nineties I read everything I could get my hands on that predicted a coming crash. Works like The Great Reckoning, The Great Depression of 1990, Bankruptcy 1995 and others convinced me that the nineties would be a decade of crash followed by another "Great Depression." Then a friend introduced me to Harry S. Dent's The Great Boom Ahead. It was written in 1992, and forecasted that a great boom was ahead and would be followed by a downturn and depression starting in 2008. Another 1992 book, Generations by William Strauss and Neil Howe, supported this concept. I discounted them in favor of the Great Depression in the 90's theory.
I was wrong. I learned a lot in these studies, including that I'm not good at predicting economics or elections (the only one I got right in twenty years was the 2008 election). The most important thing I learned was which models work best, the top three being Dent, Strauss and Howe, and the Shell Global Scenarios. The journal Foreign Affairs predicts less, but is highly accurate like these other three. Later in the 90s Dent wrote The Roaring 2000s and Strauss and Howe published The Fourth Turning. Both gave clear predictions which have turned out to be amazingly accurate. Read today as history, their forecasting ability is shocking. But the real meat is found in their predictions of post-2008.
In conclusion, my thoughts now are turned mostly to the future of education. As I've assigned The Fourth Turning to students and professional seminar participants and then discussed it with them in small and large group settings, I often asked the group what kind of education would prepare a student or professional for the career market ahead in crisis periods of 20-25 years followed by a rebuilding season of 20-25 years. Sadly, few, especially the Baby Boom and X generations, could envision anything different than job training as done in the 1980s and 1990s.
But if we actually are moving toward a depressionary era, that type of education will be obsolete--or already is. Maybe Toffler said it best when he counseled schools to stop teaching rote memorization, standardization and obsolete job skills and to start teaching things students can actually use in the new market reality: individual creativity, independent thinking, and "self-starting entrepreneurialism."
Unfortunately, many will probably try to stay stuck in the past, where high school was about extracurricular activities and getting into college and college was about career training. But a recessionary environment demands an entirely new and different skill set--one learned best by a quality leadership education: thinking, initiative, ingenuity, tenacity, inner drive, and a host of like lessons. It is almost too late for three generations to get to work, finally, on earning the kind of education that will actually succeed in the new economy. Maybe depressionary forecasts are still wrong and job training will still work in the next twenty years. If not, the new education, as outlined in A Thomas Jefferson Education, will be as surprising and necessary to most Boomers and Xers as the new economy.
Recommended Readings
The Fourth Turning, by Strauss and Howe
The Great Depression Ahead: How to Prosper in the Debt Crisis of 2010 - 2012, by Dent
Shell Global Scenarios to 2025
Great Boom Ahead: YOUR COMPREHENSIVE GUIDE TO PERSONAL AND BUSINESS PROFIT IN THE NEW ERA OF PROSPERITY, by Dent
The Roaring 2000s: Building The Wealth And Lifestyle You Desire In The Greatest Boom In History, by Dent
Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584 to 2069, by Strauss and Howe
The Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation
Future Shock, by Toffler
The Third Wave, by Toffler
Revolutionary Wealth, by Toffler
Megatrends, by Naisbitt
Megatrends 2000, by Naisbitt
Mindset, by Naisbitt
A Whole New Mind, by Pink
Foreign Affairs (periodical)
And for those who want solutions, the following by this author:
A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the Twenty-first Century
Leadership Education: The Phases of Learning (with Rachel DeMille)
A Thomas Jefferson Education Home Companion (with Rachel DeMille and Diann Jeppson)
Thomas Jefferson Education for Teens
The Coming Aristocracy: Education and the Future of Freedom
BROWSE BY SUBJECT
- Audiobooks
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Health, Mind & Body
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel