Rating: 
Summary: fascinating straw dog
Review: they make bold statements and present theory as fact. very intriguing on the surface, but frankly irritating in the lack of scientific process when examined closely. its the "prophesy" of their predictions that we are all interested in, i would imagine, and that was sufficiently vague to satisfy all.
Rating:
Summary: Junk History/Science
Review: What a bunch of simplistic, wordy, and mindless gibberish. This kind of "Junk History" contributes nothing to the advancement of mankind's journey. It only serves to feed the simplistic and lazy mind to make overdrawn conclusions and in this case this tome tends to lean to the right on the political spectrum. Never has the nation and the world been in such dire need of rational and sound thinking to guide us through this difficult time. Yet, we are now turing(no pun intended) to this kind of junk thinking, simplistic answers from religious zealots and useless polemics from mindless politicians. If our species is to survive and our enlightened culture to progress, we must reject such simplistic models...the thinking minds among us must do the hard work necessary to discover rational solutions to our most perplexing problems. This book does not contribute to this endeavor.
Rating: 
Summary: Exceeds expectations in almost every way
Review: When I picked up The Fourth Turning, I half expected a vacuous trot through highlights of history and an attempt to winnow some small number of intriguing but inexplicable cycles out of the noise. The reason I would read such a thing? Because it claims to be "An American Prophesy." Sounded like fun. I was not expecting what is probably the most notable work on historiology at least since Toffler's The Third Wave. And in many ways Howe and Neil's fresh theories on the eb and flow of generational history may outlive and transcend Toffler's ideas about the macrotrends of civilization. Their theory is simple and elegant, and based on units we all instinctively understand anyway: generations and life phases. Best of all, they make a convincing case that their theory describes Anglo-American history at least from the 1500's until now, with only one exception in the Civil War that happens to prove the rule. Also moving is the fact that many historians who berated Howe and Niel's first book (Generations, 1991) are quieter now that predictions for the 1990s turned out to be strikingly accurate. Probably the most immediately important thing to take from this book is the prediction that sometime within a few years of 2005 our culture may face another crisis the likes of which seem to arrive on schedule every 80-90 years. This great test will go down in history books with the American Revolution, the Civil War, and World War II. And it will be brought on by the alignment of the four generational types currently alive. Read this book and find out where you and your generational cohorts fit into the grand cycle of history, and what you can do to prepare. The veracity of this theory will very likely be settled by the carnage of the next 25 years.
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