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The Fourth Turning Is Here: What the Seasons of History Tell Us about How and When This Crisis Will End Hardcover – July 18, 2023
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Twenty-five years ago, Neil Howe and the late William Strauss dazzled the world with a provocative new theory of American history. Looking back at the last 500 years, they’d uncovered a distinct pattern: modern history moves in cycles, each one lasting roughly eighty to one hundred years, the length of a long human life, with each cycle composed of four eras—or “turnings”—that always arrive in the same order and each last about twenty years. The last of these eras—the fourth turning—was always the most perilous, a period of civic upheaval and national mobilization as traumatic and transformative as the New Deal and World War II, the Civil War, or the American Revolution.
Now, right on schedule, our own fourth turning has arrived. And so Neil Howe has returned with an extraordinary new prediction. What we see all around us—the polarization, the growing threat of civil conflict and global war—will culminate by the early 2030s in a climax that poses great danger and yet also holds great promise, perhaps even bringing on America’s next golden age. Every generation alive today will play a vital role in determining how this crisis is resolved, for good or ill.
Illuminating, sobering, yet ultimately empowering, The Fourth Turning Is Here takes you back into history and deep into the collective personality of each living generation to make sense of our current crisis, explore how all of us will be differently affected by the political, social, and economic challenges we’ll face in the decade to come, and reveal how our country, our communities, and our families can best prepare to meet these challenges head-on.
- Print length592 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherSimon & Schuster
- Publication dateJuly 18, 2023
- Dimensions6 x 1.9 x 9 inches
- ISBN-101982173734
- ISBN-13978-1982173739
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Editorial Reviews
Review
—The Wall Street Journal
“Driven by a deep sense that American democracy is at serious risk… [yet Howe predicts that] out of today’s polarization and partisanship will come a new egalitarian, outward-facing, confident and unified America.”
—Francis Fukuyama, The New York Times
“Arresting, mind-opening, and endlessly stimulating, The Fourth Turning Is Here is a monumental achievement. It's a big, complex, challenging book, daunting in its sweep and erudition, but well worth the effort.”
—Amy Chua, Yale Law Professor and New York Times bestselling author of Political Tribes
“Riveting and revelatory... A road map to a future that's challenging yet also full of hope.”
—Tony Robbins, New York Times bestselling author of Life Force
“Neil Howe is a genuis at mapping the present and future. This book explains how we arrived at today's era of crises, polarization, and conflicts. Fortunately, Howe also shows us the promised land that awaits on the other side.”
—Jack A. Goldstone, Professor of Public Policy, George Mason Univeristy
“The most difficult thing in the world is to see history as we are living it, and no one does that with clearer eyes and a fuller heart than Neil Howe. The Fourth Turning is Here is a tour de force.”
—Ben Hunt, creator of Epsilon Theory
“Neil Howe always sees things about America that other observers miss, harnessing a remarkable command of history and demography to help us think more clearly about current problems and summoning a remarkable imagination to help us envision the big changes ahead.”
—Nicholas Eberstadt, political economist at the American Enterprise Institute
“A vitally important book.”
—Michael J. Meese, PHD, brigadier general, US Army (retired)
“The riveting follow-up to The Fourth Turning…. All readers should enjoy this wild ride by an entertaining writer who seems to have read every relevant source. A fascinating work of global history and look to the future.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Far-ranging [and] intriguing.”
—Publishers Weekly
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : Simon & Schuster (July 18, 2023)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 592 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1982173734
- ISBN-13 : 978-1982173739
- Item Weight : 1.61 pounds
- Dimensions : 6 x 1.9 x 9 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #5,383 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #3 in Demography Studies
- #14 in History & Theory of Politics
- #101 in United States History (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Neil Howe is a historian, economist, and demographer who writes and speaks frequently on generational change in American history and on long-term fiscal policy. He is cofounder of LifeCourse Associates, a marketing, HR, and strategic planning consultancy serving corporate, government, and nonprofit clients. He has coauthored six books with William Strauss, including Generations (1991), 13th Gen (1993), The Fourth Turning (1997), and Millennials Rising (2000). His other coauthored books include On Borrowed Time (1988). And more recently Millennials Go to College (2007), and Millennials in the Workplace (2010). He is also a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where he helps lead the CSIS "Global Aging Initiative," and a senior advisor to the Concord Coalition. He holds graduate degrees in history and economics from Yale University. He lives in Great Falls, Virginia.
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The author, Howe, provides explanations of anomalous data apparently disagreeing with the theory; this was helpful in understanding the nuanced theory that he subscribes to. When this reviewer, upon recommendation to read this book, found a lower cost earlier version of the book co-authored by another person opted for the newest (year 2023) rewritten and published after the death of the co-author. The current book is worth purchasing and reading even if one might speculate that the earlier edition might be more readable. At times the author introduces some religiosity that some readers will consider adding value while others may see these additions as detracting from the main theme; the same observation is true for mentions of Donald Trump. This reviewer found the 2023 version, reviewed here challenging to read.
Illustrative of the style and substance of this book, the author writes: “Preface. This book presents a theory of modern history and a forecast of America’s future that have been in development for many decades. Bill Strauss and I began working on both the theory and the forecast back in the late 1980s, while writing Generations: The History of America’s Future, which was published in 1991. We released our most recent book-length exposition of both in The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy, published in 1997. That was twenty-six years ago… Over the last several years, I have been showered by requests to reapply our theory to the future from the perspective of where America finds itself today. This book is my effort to do just that. I am authoring it alone. My longtime collaborator Bill Strauss passed away in the fall of 2007...”
Howe writes: “In writing this book, my key objective was to answer the questions today’s readers most want answered: When did our current Fourth Turning (or Crisis era) begin? How has it evolved? Where is it going? And how will it end?... Before this book is over, I will be asking readers to imagine a plausible future for America that will stretch deep into the twenty-first century… For readers who are new to our work, I include a concise introduction to our theory of generations and history. You the reader are of course invited to read our earlier works. But you don’t have to read them to understand this book… Over the course of this book, I hope to persuade you of a more ancient yet also more optimistic doctrine: that our collective social life, as with so many rhythmic systems in nature, requires seasons of sudden change and radical uncertainty in order for us to thrive over time. Or, to paraphrase Blaise Pascal: History has reasons that reason knows nothing of… In truth, every generation is what it has to be… Marcel Proust wrote that “what we call our future is the shadow that our past projects in front of us.” It’s easy to understand that our future must somehow be determined by our past...”
Howe writes: “History never looks like history when you are living through it.—
The old American republic is collapsing. And a new American republic, as yet unrecognizable, is under construction… Measures of national happiness and national pride (“ very proud to be an American”) have fallen to record lows… We can’t conduct a peaceful military withdrawal from an allied democracy or a peaceful transfer of power from one president to the next… America ended up with Covid deaths-per-capita on par with many of the poorest and least stable countries of the world. U.S. life expectancy, already declining since 2014, fell further in 2020 than in any single year since 1943, when America was suffering major battle casualties in Africa, Europe, and the Pacific. It fell again by seven months in 2021… The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives cannot maintain a national firearms registry, even though guns now kill more children annually than automobiles (an astonishing predicament America shares only with Yemen)… Like addicts acquiring tolerance, policymakers have backed themselves into a corner: The public braces itself for the dark hour when the Fed can no longer ease and Congress can no longer borrow no matter how badly the economy founders… Today’s older generations, including most of America’s leaders, were raised amid rising abundance.… In every sphere of life, [a] new mood of contracting horizons has been creating a new and different America… The Global Financial Crisis in 2008 was the pivot point. Until then, “globalization” seemed inexorable and global trade expanded (as a share of global production) almost every year… Until 2008, the number of democracies around the world was still expanding… Income is becoming more correlated with education (though less with race or ethnicity). Education in turn is becoming more correlated with health and longevity… Over the last decade, we have witnessed a declining birth rate and falling home ownership among young adults—and fewer business start-ups either by or for young adults… Congress dares not touch the growing share of federal outlays dedicated to “earned” senior benefits… Electoral choices are becoming ever-more lopsided, one way or the other, by state or county. Elected leaders from the two parties hardly talk to each other, much less socialize or discuss ideas… Half say that politics is a struggle between right and wrong. A third say that violence may be justified to achieve political goals, and two-thirds expect violence in response to future election results… Yet as Americans witness the old civic order collapse, they are moving beyond pessimism. They are coming to two inescapable conclusions. First, in order to survive and recover, the country must construct a new civic order powerful enough to replace what is now gone. And second, the new order must be imposed… by “our side,” which would rescue the country from its current paralysis, rather than by “the other side,” which would plunge the country into inescapable ruin… we are becoming… a nation of all-in tribal partisans,..”
Howe writes: “THE SEASONS OF HISTORY… At the core of modern history lies this remarkable pattern: Over the past five or six centuries, Anglo-American society has entered a new era—a new turning—every two decades or so. At the start of each turning, people change how they feel about themselves, the culture, the nation, and the future. Turnings come in cycles of four. Each cycle spans the length of a long human life, roughly eighty to one hundred years, a unit of time the ancients called the saeculum. Together, the four turnings of the saeculum comprise history’s periodic rhythm, in which the seasons of spring, summer, fall, and winter correspond to eras of rebirth, growth, entropy, and (finally) creative destruction: The First Turning is a High,… The Second Turning is an Awakening,… The Third Turning is an Unraveling,… The Fourth Turning is a Crisis,… The Fourth Turning—for now, let’s call it the Millennial Crisis—began with the global market crash of 2008 and has thus far witnessed a shrinking middle class, the “MAGA” rise of Donald Trump, a global pandemic, and new fears of a great-power war...”
Howe writes: “IT’S ALL HAPPENED BEFORE… So much for the shifts in national mood and generational alignment over the last saeculum, stretching back to the end of World War II. Have shifts like these ever happened before in earlier saecula? Yes—many times… When people start taking on less risk as individuals, they start taking on more risk as groups… WHAT LIES AHEAD… sometime before the mid-2030s, America will pass through a great gate in history, commensurate with the American Revolution, the Civil War, and the twin emergencies of the Great Depression and World War II… Yet Americans will also gain, by the end of the Fourth Turning, a unique opportunity to achieve a new greatness as a people. They will be able to solve long-term national problems and perhaps lead the way in solving global problems as well. This too is part of the Fourth Turning historical track record… today’s generations have their own rendezvous with destiny… MEMORIES OF TOMORROW “The farther backward you look, the farther forward you are likely to see,” Winston Churchill once said… One central purpose of this book is to make sense of these turnings by distilling them into a recognizable pattern… The book is organized into three parts. Part One explores our cyclical perspective and explains our method and terminology… Part Two covers what can be expected to happen over the next decade or so… Part Three pushes further ahead in time, past the winter and into the spring season of the saeculum… Over the millennia, people have … develop[ed] three ways of understanding time: chaotic, cyclical, and linear… In chaotic time, history has no pattern… Enter cyclical time, whose prehistoric origins are informally rooted in the countless rhythms common to virtually all traditional societies: chanting, dancing, sleeping, waking, planting, harvesting, hunting, feasting, gestating, birthing, and dying… Unlike chaotic time, cyclical time is both descriptive and prescriptive… Clearly, cyclical time continues to shape our lives today… Even more decisive was the rise and spread of the Western monotheistic religions, which inspired the hope that we are all destined for more than a life tied to fortune’s wheel. The Judaic, Persian, Christian, and Islamic cosmologies all embraced the radically new concept of personal and historical time as a unidirectional drama. For humanity, time begins with a fall from grace; struggles forward in an intermediate sequence of trials, failures, and divine interventions; and ends with redemption and re-entry into the Kingdom of God… by the early Christian theologians remained a relatively arcane idea, fully understood by only a clerical elite. But in the sixteenth century, the Reformation and the spread of the printed Gospel ushered in a new urgency (and popular involvement) to linear history. For the first time, ordinary people throughout Europe began speculating about the historical “signs” of Christ’s second and final “coming”—and inventing new sects according to their expectations about when and how this would happen… England’s first New World settlements began as outposts of radical Calvinism and the radical Enlightenment. Not surprisingly, America has come to embody the most extreme expression of progressive linearism.
We introduced this long-term cycle earlier. We call it the saeculum. It is roughly eighty to one hundred years in length—the duration of a long human life—and it naturally divides itself into four basic moods or seasons. As for the “new social groups” that push this dynamic forward, these of course are generations, each of which is roughly eighteen to twenty-five years in length… As we shall see, the term saeculum dates back over two millennia. Generation, as both a word and concept, dates back even earlier, to the very dawn of civilization.””
Howe writes: “by the time the Romans adopted the ritual, it was known as the saeculum… approximating one hundred years… In De Die Natale, Censorinus described “the natural saeculum” as “the time span defined by the longest human life between birth and death”—… A more probable explanation is that the Romans were impressed by a strong 80-to-110-year rhythm that seemed to pulse through their history. During the republic, this rhythm appeared in the timing of Rome’s greatest perils and its subsequent renewals: the founding of the republic; the wars against the Veii and the Gauls, in which Rome was nearly overwhelmed; disastrous defeats in the Great Samnite War, which sent Rome officially into mourning; the near catastrophe of Hannibal’s invasion; and Rome’s desperate campaign against invading Germanic tribes… Rome did not soon forget these near-death experiences… During the empire, the saecular pattern resumed, with periodic renewals after civil wars or invasion:… the… late third-century recovery under Diocletian and Constantine. The first emperor to be baptized a Christian (on his deathbed), Constantine notably declined to hold another saecular games…”
Howe writes: “Following the Gregorian calendar reform of the 1580s, Protestant historians began to categorize Western history into centuries. During the seventeenth century, essayists and diarists began referring to such “natural” centuries as the prior “century of Spanish gold” or the current “grand century of Louis XIV.”… The first to contribute was Quincy Wright… In his Study, Wright observed that war-waging occurred “in approximately fifty-year oscillations, each alternate period of concentration being more severe.” Wright uncovered this pattern not only in modern American and European history, but also in Hellenistic and Roman times—… Wright’s timetable was corroborated by… Arnold J. Toynbee. In A Study of History, best known for its grand theory of the rise and fall of civilizations, Toynbee identified an “alternating rhythm” in a “Cycle of War and Peace.” Punctuating this cycle were quarter-century “general wars” that had occurred in Europe at roughly one-century intervals since the Renaissance. Toynbee identified and dated five repetitions… of this cycle, each initiated by the most decisive conflicts of its century… In addition to these five modern centuries, Toynbee identified similar cycles spanning six centuries of ancient Chinese and Hellenistic history… Like Wright, he linked this rhythm to the gradual decay of the “living memory of a previous war.”… Toynbee did something more. He subdivided the war cycle into four periods and identified a “breathing space” after a bigger war and a “general peace” after a smaller war. He sometimes seemed to imply that no wars occur during these intervening quarter-century eras.”
Howe writes: “Some wars, at least minor wars, have occurred during practically every quarter century of European (and American) history… Modelski calls this property “closure”—and that its particular timing is regulated by generational change: “It is not difficult to see how a concatenation of four generations might also determine the wave-length of the war-peace cycle.”… The Crisis ends one saeculum and launches the next.
Wallace hypothesized that all of today’s established religions are the ossified remains of the “prophetic and ecstatic visions” of past revitalization movements. Wallace did not say how often these movements arise, but he did note that “they are recurrent features in human history”…”
Howe writes: “Central to Khaldun’s outlook is a cycle of social beliefs and behavior. And driving that cycle is a dynamic of generational aging—which helps to explain history’s underlying regularity… These are the solstices of the saeculum: Crises and Awakenings. Through five centuries of Anglo-American history, no span of more than fifty years (the duration of two phases of life) has ever elapsed without the occurrence of a Crisis or an Awakening. Every generation has thus been shaped by either a Crisis or an Awakening during one of its… first two phases of life—and has encountered both a Crisis and an Awakening at some point through its life cycle.
When we first notice a generational difference, we often interpret it as a mere phase-of-life difference. “If you aren’t a liberal when you’re young, you have no heart, but if you aren’t a conservative when you’re middle-aged, you have no head,” goes the old saying—which (in its various wordings) has been attributed to Edmund Burke, François Guizot, Benjamin Disraeli, and Winston Churchill.”
Howe writes: “As the twentieth century progressed, social scientists began routinely to weigh “generational effects”… as an explanation for changes in behaviors or beliefs. In recent decades, corporations have learned to practice “generational marketing.”… Each generation’s link with pop music, social media, and technology has become far better understood (and accepted) than its profound connection to nature and history.”
Howe writes: “the length of a generation… it should average about twenty-one years,… Like any social category (race, class, nationality), a generation can allow plenty of individual exceptions and be fuzzy at the edges…. to quote the Italian historian Giuseppe Ferrari, is that every generation “is born, lives, and dies.”… it helps to look for three attributes: first, a generation’s common location in history; second, its common beliefs and behavior; and third, its perceived membership in a common generation… Perceived membership confirms what many pollsters have long suspected about Boomers—that their true boundaries (born between 1943 and 1960) should start and stop a few years earlier than the fertility bulge used by the Census Bureau to define this generation (between 1946 and 1964)... Here’s the point: Every twenty years or so, Americans are surprised to encounter a new rising generation. They are struck by some publicized event or situation in which youth seem to behave very differently than the youth who came just before. This typically happens when the oldest members of the new generation are in their late twenties or early thirties… The average periodicity of these events is significant. At 21.5 years, it is very close to the average recent length of a phase of life—and of a generation… The generational birth years also coincide with the saecular rhythm of alternating Crises and Awakenings. When you compare dates, you will find that the first birth year of each generation usually lies just a few years before the opening or closing year of a Crisis or Awakening… Most ancient cultures not only divided up time into four parts, giving rise to four seasons...”
Howe writes: “When it assumes a persona, a generation, like an individual, can choose from only a limited number of available roles, each pre-scripted… Lewis Mumford sums up the pattern nicely: “The commonest axiom of history is that every generation revolts against its fathers and makes friends with its grandfathers.” What these archetypal myths illustrate is this: Your generation isn’t like the generation that shaped you, but it has much in common with the generation that shaped the generation that shaped you. Or, put another way: Archetypes do not create archetypes like themselves; instead, they create the shadows of archetypes like themselves.”
Howe writes: “SEASONS OF AMERICAN HISTORY It is not worthwhile to try to keep history from repeating itself, for man’s character will always make the preventing of the repetitions impossible.—MARK TWAIN… As late as the 1830s, the free population of the United States was almost entirely Northern European and Protestant. “American” political debates were waged largely in terms of British precedents (think: common law, bill of rights, trial by jury), and the usage of the English language had become more standard in America than in England itself… The growing influx of new ethnicities (Catholic Germans and Irish in the 1850s; Jews, Italians, and Poles in the 1910s; Hispanics and Asians in the 1990s) has coincided with the rise of the Nomad archetype… As generations age, they together form new archetypal constellations that alter every aspect of society, from government and the economy to culture and family life… The modern Anglo-American saeculum has thus far produced six or seven repetitions of each turning.”
The author, Neil Howe, continues in this fashion to explain and defend his thesis.
What I found hardest in all this reading was having a clear sense of the differences between generations. While he describes them, and names them also for the eras they live through and typify (such as Boomers for the baby boom generation.). I found myself trying to establish a clear expectation for any named generation.
He of course admits that each named generation has a spectrum of personalities. He says the event that forms a generation is the younger generation distinguishing itself from its parents along with the constellation of social problems it deals with.
Crisis eras are defined by the major wars associated with them and accord about every 80 to 90 years. He refers to a secular which is just less than a century and is defined by the length of a long human lifetime.
The fourth turning is the time when the unraveling turns to a crisis and is likely to include a major war. How the Prophet generation and Hero generation that are the leaders for that time deal with that challenge determine the historical outcome.
The US has been fortunate in that with the possible exception of the civil war all its fourth turnings have been associated with wars that ultimately result in improved living standards and a more united society. He believes we are in a Fourth turning now and it will end in the early 2030s. He hopes for a constructive outcome but his main point is it will be a time of crisis and unrest.
Certainly the picturing history as a sequence of seasons helps to form a coherent picture of events. It helps the historical story hang together.
There is always the danger is that his belief in the season hypothesis colors the way he emphasizes various historical events to support the theory of turning. Sort of a self fulfilling prophecy. Still it is true we certainly identify social generations.: Boomers, Xers, and Millennials to name the major contemporary generations. The GI generation was the generation that spent its youth in World War 2, and the silent generation the generation of the Great Depression.
If a Fourth turning requires a season of awakening and redefining of national purpose, and if we are at that point now perhaps that is why we are on hold waiting for new younger leaders. I am not sure any of his definitions are tight enough to allow for the possibility of refutation as time passes and the time of a new generation arises. Still it offers an interesting insight into past and current events.
Too long and redundant.
Needs one page tables for each archetype with bullet point comparisons
From a personal perspective I have some disagreement with defining the cultural characteristics of each cycle, especially for those born near the end of a generation. I am classified as a Boomer but have characteristics of Gen X. I don't share clear cut traits of those born first in a cycle. I am an echo of the Boomers and the beginnings of a whisper of Gen X.
Overall a good read.
Top reviews from other countries
Une telle hauteur de vue sur la marche du monde et sur l'Histoire permet d'éclairer et de mieux comprendre ce que nous sommes collectivement en train de vivre... et ce qui nous attend pour les (dizaines) d'années à venir.
We dont know what the next crisis will be, but we know what to how the generations will respond.