Rating: 
Summary: A slow read but packed with information.Fascinating.
Review: I'm usually a pretty fast reader. This book, however was an exception. I found myself fighting to plow ahead in parts and had to re-read many others. Very logically laid out and interesting. Despite it's difficulty, I loved it.
Rating: 
Summary: This book breaks history into cycles.
Review: This book breaks history into easy to digest cycles. It then extrapolates social responces to major events for about 50 years into the future based upon common reactions in previous cycles.
Rating:
Summary: A new concept
Review: I don't think readers should expect to put down this book upon finishing it and feel the sense of completion that always acompanies the end of a good book; however, the book does offer some interesting points. Although a bit wordy at times, the authors offer many details to back up their points and emphasis them more strongly which obviously is important in a book which presents a completely new concept of historical time as we have been taught all our lives. I definitely see a pattern in history which the authors have pointed out - far too much of a pattern to be mearly coincidenses. I belive the basis for this book is solid and would recomend it to everyone as a look at ourselves and our society from a new viewpoint.
Rating: 
Summary: Thought provoking concept provides excuses for bad behavior.
Review: The examination of cyclical shifts in attitude and values within our society is of benefit. If Strauss and Howe are correct about a new Civic-minded generation coming of age who will place societal good ahead of selfishness and moral chaos, then they have offered us hope. Unfortunately, this book celebrates the chaotic destruction of family, of duty, of responsibility to others and God equally with the building up of virtue. In the authors' eyes, the evil which we have witnessed in the past 35 years is a necessary and acceptable part of cyclical change. The public may well have to witness foul behavior before becoming willing to take action and move in the opposite direction however, I strongly disagree that acceptance of such behavior is appropriate.END
Rating: 
Summary: Generational Prediction or Concord Coalition Platform
Review: The Fourth Turning: Does "Generations..." Predict the Future? --[PARAGRAPH#1]--Unlike their earlier work where their predictions were vague and hedged, the authors' predictions are now confident and well defined. As in earlier works they claim that they have found a historical pattern that repeats itself every 90-odd years so reliably that they can confidently predict much of what will happen in the coming century.
--[PARAGRAPH#2]--Their predictions are identical in every respect to the countless articles and documentaries that describe how the impending federal budget crisis and the implosion of the social security system will aggravate the relations between the generations - a theme that became popular during the last presidential campaign. --[PARAGRAPH#3]--Which leads me to ask, How this can be? Those who have predicted the crisis use a common methodology that has nothing to do with the Generations... of Strauss and Howe: simple projection of current demographic, economic, and cultural factors into the future. Yet their predictions are virtually identical with those of The Fourth Turning. Is it possible, then, that two entirely different methods and theories can lead to exactly the same prediction? Absolutely not, and herein lies an interesting sub plot in the publishing of The Fourth Turning.
--[PARAGRAPH#4]--Their predictions demonstrably COULD NOT proceed from their theory because they have explicitly disallowed in all their writings the kinds of economic reasoning implicit in these popular predictions. That is, basic events which in this case are demographic and financial realities, force people to adapt their habits of thought and action to new realities. Instead, they argue that a generalized mood - something like Jungian archetypes - channels and defines a generation's reactions to specific events. They explicitly reject, for example, such basic events as urbanization, economics and industrialization as basic forces in history. Rather, they usually argue that archetypes cause these events. They cannot, therefore, legitimately claim that the character of GenXers is largely due to the employment, economic, and demogrdaphic conditions of their era.
--[PARAGRAPH#5]--More broadly, I have written in Amazon.com (Generations commentary) that the authors are really describing how basic events - principally boom/bust cycles and new technology - affect or lead to the generational moods the authors describe. For example, since parents have been raised in a different era than their children, they may give inappropriate advice to their children who are facing a very different set of basic conditions; the result is intergenerational conflict. This kind of generational friction is happening now as it did in the 1830s. It appears that Strauss and Howe implicitly recognize this despite their inadequate theory.
--[PARAGRAPH#6]--In sum, the book offers no fresh insight on the generational conflicts of the coming century and what role they will play in the coming crisis. But the book has not been a waste - and here is where the subplot comes in. Judging from the sales of the book and the comments of VP Gore, the book has done an excellent job in getting out the message of the Concord Coalition of which Howe is an adviser. It might have been reasonable for Howe to include the real source of his ideas in the bibliography, of course, but the dramatic effect of presenting Coalition's platform within the grand scheme of Generations... might have been dimmed for the credulous. --[PARAGRAPH#7]--One final recommendation: to those who find the authors' books a convenient source for social history, they should know that there are far better sources - particularly the works of the many excellent social historians that have emerged over the last 30 years. An excellent compendium of these is Henretta's well written textbook, America's History.
Rating:
Summary: The circle beats a straight line any day!
Review: S & H present us with a cyclical view of current history to counteract our culturally biased linear view, which exalts progress over everything. I particularly enjoyed the rich array of material supportive of seeing history as an extension of nature, which generally moves in cycles (spring, summer, autumn, winter, e.g.). As a Silent Generation elder I have seen three of the secular turnings S & H identify and have little doubt that the fourth is coming right on schedule in the next decade Clearly, our culture is headed for a crisis: few of our major institutions are working very well. I am aware of these things intuitively and don't require mountains of data.. And I'm willing to place my bets on their analysis, along with my investments and my future plans. I have been using the S & H generational analysis in my business, with my children, and in my social life for the past 6 years and found it highly useful, entertaining, and insightful. The Fourth Turning enriches their thesis and drives it into a new way of approaching history. I think this book is a "must read" for every thoughtful person. Alan Gilburg
Rating:
Summary: A provacative and exciting look at the past and the future
Review: (A version of this review appeared in The Boston Globe, which owns the rights. Please post it, just as you have posted excerpts from the New York Times review. Thank you.)
Alas, in our age of professional specialization, one
must look outside the academy for works of real originality and
breadth. One such is The Fourth Turning, by William Strauss and
Neal Howe, which shows how much more can be done with themes of
rise, decline, birth, death, and change.
Six years ago, in Generations, Strauss and Howe laid out a
provacative and immensely entertaining outline of American
history, based on a four-stage cycle of generations and
historical periods. Now, in a somewhat shorter, more focused,
and even more provocative sequel, they have recast their argument
with an eye on the immediate future. There, they see an
inspiring, chilling era of tragedy and triumph. The "fourth
turning" to which their title refers is nothing less than a
national crisis on the scale of the American Revolution, the
Civil War, or the Depression and the Second World War--and they
expect it to break out sometime during the next decade. That
crisis will be the climax of the fourth great "saeculum" in
American national life--a Latin word referring to the span of a
normal long life, that is, between 80 and 100 years. Their
argument can only be understood with reference to history, but
space does not allow all four of the great cycles of American
history to be laid out. We can, however, understand their view
of the current saeculum--which began around 1964--by analogies
with two previous, completed ones: the (somewhat accelerated)
Civil War saeculum from about 1822 through 1886, and the Great
Power saeculum from 1886 through 1963.
Like every other saeculum, they argue, this one began with
an Awakening--in this case, the consciousness revolution of the
1960s and 1970s, parallel to the Transcendental Awakening of the
1820s and 1830s, the father of abolitionism, and the Missionary
Awakening of 1884-1908, which focused on social issues. All
Awakening eras feature social activism among the young, increased
substance abuse, and an emphasis on women's and minority rights. They are driven by young adults--most recently, the Baby
Boomers--who are rebelling against the consensus of the "High"
periods in which they grew up--the Jeffersonian high of roughly
1800-1820, the post-Civil War high of 1865-85, and, most notably,
the "American high" of 1945-63, whose consensus atmosphere is so
deeply missed by so many older Americans today. Awakenings,
however, produce ideological ferment rather than ideological
consensus, and lead directly not to the golden age foreseen by
their youth, but rather to an Unraveling in which divisions over
values become worse and worse, and the glue that holds society
together rapidly weakens. Few will be inclined to dispute the
authors'contention that we now find ourselves in an "Unraveling"
that began around 1984, parallel to the pre-civil war crisis of
1844-61 and the turbulent era of 1908-29. Both these periods
were marked by a general loosening of moral standards and a
strong backlash in response, a splitting of the electorate along
religious, ethnic and racial lines, an increasingly contentious
tone in politics, an explosion in crime, a growth in votes for
third parties, and an outburst of nativism in response to new
immigration. Sound familiar?
Another political parallel is equally chilling. From the
1830s through the early 1850s, the great "Compromise Generation"
of Webster and Clay held things together until the eve of the
Civil War. Their present-day generational counterpart are the
Silent Generation (born 1926 through 1942), who have generally
played a conciliatory political role, but who have never made it
to the White House and are now (Nunn, Cohen, Heflin, et al)
fleeing the Congress in droves, leaving national leadership to
the more contentious Baby Boomers. Indeed, the authors openly
hope for a more conciliatory Silent President in 2000, perhaps to
postpone the crisis for a few more years and give us time to
prepare.
Unravelings have always had interesting effects within
American homes, the authors also argue, and here, too,
contemporary history is bearing them out. The generations with
the most difficult childhoods are born during Awakenings and grow
up during unravelings: the Gilded generation that then had to
fight the Civil War, the Lost Generation (born 1883-1900
according to the authors, although this historian would move the
latter date to about 1905), and now, Generation X, whom Strauss
and Howe prefer to call the Thirteenth generation, whose
childhoods featured an explosion of divorce, abortion, drug use,
crime, and a well-publicized erosion of educational standards. Yet even six years ago, the authors' first book suggested that
something had changed dramatically around 1982, when society took
a renewed interest in kids and movies began featuring cuddly
infants rather than monsters like the Exorcist, Damien, or
Rosemary's Baby. Now, of course, younger children have become
the focus of the nation's political life, and their nurture and
discipline has moved onto center stage of the national agenda. Boomers never asked their parents to help on their homerwork;
Generation Xers had little homework to do; but the new generation
of Millenials asks for, and gets, help on their assignments
almost every night of the week.
This is essential, as well as natural, the authors argue,
because the Millenial generation will inherit the task of their
"GI" grandparents and great-grandparents: that of dealing with
the next great crisis. Like those born from 1905 through 1925,
they will be team players, able to band together to handle any
task during their youth (building dams in the 1930s and winning
the Second World War in the 1940s), and carrying the same can-do
attitude through their middle years (roughly 2023-45),
which--provided they and their elders do successfully resolve the
crisis--will be the scene of another great American high of
confidence, rebuilt infrastructure, and stable families. Nothing
lasts forever, though, and when new and troubling events disturb
the consensus, the children of the new High will begin a new
awakening, and aging Generation Xers and midlife millenials will
finally see what their parents went through in the famous 1960s
first hand.
The authors trust in history, ancient as well as modern. They bluntly acknowledge at the beginning of the book that they
are rejecting at least two centuries of western thought by
proposing a cyclical rather than a linear concept of time, but
they find additional confirmation of their thesis in the Iliad,
the books of Exodus and Joshua, and above all in Ecclesiastes,
which they use to open and close their work. In a sense, they
are trying to reconnect the present to the real classical
tradition, and they do so far more effectively than Alan Bloom or
William Bennett, who have simply raided that tradition to make
their own linear, unraveling-era points. And if they turn out to
be wrong, I would suggest, this, too will mean that the United
States, and perhaps human society, has fundamentally changed:
that our regimented, globally dependent and media-driven society
is no longer capable of translating rhetoric into action, either
for bad or for good. The Fourth Turning is weakest on the point of greatest
practical interest: what, exactly, the new crisis is likely to
involve. They present a series of scenarios combining, in
various ways, a financial crisis, a collapse of federal
authority, a racial or regional civil war, or an international
crisis perhaps involving terrorism, but none of them seems
completely convincing. Yet here, too, history is on their side. No one in the 1760s would have predicted the American Revolution;
almost no one in 1928 would have foreseen either Depression or
World War. Only in th
Rating:
Summary: Regarding the New York Times
Review: Fortune cookies? Michael Lind, who wrote the New York Times review, could not have read the same book I did. In fact, Strauss and Howe explain their method at length and devote at least 70 pages to what is surely the most specific and breathtakingly concrete narrative of the next thirty years available anywhere. If anything, The Fourth Turning errs in not having enough fortune cookies in it. (When unveiling the future, after all, a little vagueness is prudent.) Lind, on the other hand, recently wrote a book subtitled "The Fourth American Revolution" but somehow forgot to mention whether this revolution would happen two years from now or two thousand years from now. I suggest readers judge these two books by noticing which one puts its bets, if not its fortune cookies, on the table
Rating:
Summary: Regarding the New York Times
Review:
Quoting the NY Times:
"Alas, most of the authors' predictions about the American future turn out to be as vague as those of fortune cookies"
Fortune cookies? Michael Lind, who wrote the New York Times review, could not have read the same book I did. In fact, Strauss and Howe explain their method at length and devote at least 70 pages to what is surely the most specific and breathtakingly concrete narrative of the next thirty years available anywhere. If anything, The Fourth Turning errs in not having enough fortune cookies in it. (When unveiling the future, after all, a little vagueness is prudent.) Lind, on the other hand, recently wrote a book subtitled "The Fourth American Revolution" but somehow forgot to mention whether this revolution would happen two years from now or two thousand years from now. I suggest readers judge these two books by noticing which one puts its bets, if not its fortune cookies, on the table
Rating:
Summary: Uncanny, Cogent, and Potent
Review: Since Strauss and Howe first got together to write GENERATIONS, they have demonstrated uncanny insight into American culture, the rhythms of history, and what the future will likely bring.
Where their particular perspective deviates from your own, you can easily interpret their insights from multiple vantage points.
If your experience with Strauss and Howe's work is similar to my own, it will transform your view of the world and your life.
Do yourself and others you care about a favor and read it.
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