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The Fourth Turning

What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny

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 Now available as an unabridged recording for the first time

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Discover the game-changing theory of the cycles of history and what past generations can teach us about living through times of upheaval—with deep insights into the roles that Boomers, Generation X, and Millennials have to play.

First comes a High, a period of confident expansion. Next comes an Awakening, a time of spiritual exploration and rebellion. Then comes an Unraveling, 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.

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 what comes next.

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 twenty-year eras—or “turnings”—that comprise history’s seasonal rhythm of growth, maturation, entropy, and rebirth. Illustrating this cycle through a brilliant analysis of the post–World War II period, The Fourth Turning offers bold predictions about how all of us can prepare, individually and collectively, for this rendezvous with destiny. Americas Future Studies Political Science Politics & Government Social Sciences Sociology United States American History Socialism Capitalism Liberalism Social justice Latin American

Critic reviews

“I put down The Fourth Turning with a mixture of terror and excitement. . . . If Strauss and Howe are right, they will take their place among the great American prophets.”—David Kaiser, The Boston Globe

“One of the best efforts to give us an integrated vision of where we are going.”—The Wall Street Journal

“A startling vision of what the cycles of history predict for the future.”—USA Weekend
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Not a good audiobook as too many tables and lists. Buy the hard copy instead, I imagine it will be a much better read.

Full of lists and tables, so not a good audio book.

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impossible book to listen to. imagine having to listen countless times to charts being explained.... horror

this needs to be read as it is too visual

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I'm not sure what the point of this book is. 19 hours of random words with very little interesting content. It's sometimes breaks out into something interesting, then it's starts with the waffle of random words to make the book longer than it needs to be. It's probably trying to be a history of everything but falls very short. On the bright side, I got some good sleep.

Over 19 hours of random words

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The cadence of the world is a useful way to look at history and to consider the future. This is a good explainer.

Helpful insights

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