The Fourth Turning Audiobook (Free)

This astonishing book will change how you start to see the world — and your place in it.

With startling originality, The Fourth Turning illuminates the past, explains the present, and reimagines the future. Most remarkably, it offers an absolutely persuasive prophecy about a fresh American era that may begin just after the millennium.

William Strauss and Neil Howe foundation this vision on the provocative new theory of American history. The authors look back five hundred years and uncover a distinct pattern: about The 4th Turning Modern history moves in cycles, each one enduring about the distance of an extended human existence, each composed of four eras–or ‘turnings’–that last about two decades and that generally get to the same purchase.

First comes a High, a period of confident extension as a new order takes main after the previous has been swept apart. Next comes an Awakening, a time of spiritual exploration and rebellion against the now-established order. After that comes an Unraveling, an extremely troubled era in which individualism triumphs over crumbling organizations. Last comes a Crisis–the Fourth Turning–when society goes by through an excellent and perilous gate ever sold. Together, the four turnings comprise history’s seasonal tempo of growth, maturation, entropy, and rebirth.

Strauss and Howe locate today’s America seeing that midway via an Unraveling, roughly ten years away from another era of Problems. In an excellent analysis of the post-World War II period, they show how generational dynamics will be the key to understanding the cycles of American history. They draw brilliant portraits of all modern generations: the can-do G.We.s, the mediating Silent, the values-absorbed Boomers, the pragmatic 13ers, and the child Millennials. Placed in the framework of history’s lengthy rhythms, the persona and part of each generation become clear–as does the inevitability from the coming Crisis.

Whatever your stage of life, The Fourth Turning offers bold predictions about how exactly all of us can prepare, individually and collectively, for America’s next rendezvous with destiny.