PDF Summary:The Fourth Turning, by William Strauss and Neil Howe

If you’ve ever noticed that history seems to repeat itself over the course of centuries, you may be wondering what causes that pattern—and how it may play out in the future. In The Fourth Turning, historian William Strauss and consultant Neil Howe explain how Anglo-American history follows a pattern of four 15 to 25-year periods, called Turnings, and how the behaviors of different generations define these Turnings.

In our guide, we’ll explore the authors’ theories on the Four Turnings, as well as the generational archetypes and their respective roles in the Turnings. We’ll also discuss the authors’ descriptions of the past three Turnings and their predictions for the Fourth. Finally, we’ll examine the authors’ theories in the context of history and modern society, as well as how their predictions about the Fourth Turning have played out in the years since the book’s publication in 1997.

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• Nomads are born during an Awakening. In childhood, Nomads are loosely parented or neglected. They feel estranged and are stigmatized in young adulthood, but they become sensible mid-lifers who provide practical leadership, and they’re hardy and reliable in elderhood.
• Heroes are born during an Unraveling. In childhood, Heroes are heavily protected. They have a strong sense of teamwork, duty, and self-sacrifice in young adulthood, but grow arrogant in midlife. As elders, they find the values they fought for under attack by the Prophet young adults.
• Artists are born during a Crisis. In childhood, Artists are overprotected. In young adulthood, they’re thoughtful and deferential. They make for ambivalent midlife leaders and compassionate elders.

Archetypes and Story Arcs

These generational archetypes and their life progressions are similar to some of the classic story archetypes.

The Prophet generation could represent a tragedy story arc, as they progress from the High in which they’re born through a lifelong dismantling of the High, ending in a Crisis where they have gained the wisdom of learning from their many mistakes.

The Nomad generation represents a “voyage and return” story arc, living their youth feeling disconnected and cut off from other generations but growing strong and practical from their isolated journeys.

The Hero generation represents an overcoming the monster story arc. In their youth they’re faced with an overwhelming threat they have to solve by putting aside their own needs for the greater good, after which they can bask in the aftermath of their victory.

The Artist generation represents a rebirth story arc. Born during the tumult of a Crisis, in their youth they experience the rebirth into the renewed society of a High, growing sensitive and thoughtful from their experience and retaining that sensitivity as society descends back toward the Unraveling and Crisis.

The authors discuss generations throughout history, but for the purposes of this guide we’ll discuss the following:

• The Lost generation, a Nomad generation born between 1883 and 1900
• The G.I. generation, a Hero generation born between 1901 and 1924
• The Silent generation, an Artist generation born between 1925 and 1942
• The Boomer generation, a Prophet generation born between 1943 and 1960
• Generation X (or Xennials), a Nomad generation born between 1961 and 1981
• The Millennial generation, a Hero generation born beginning in 1982 (the authors don’t give a firm end date for this generation’s birth years)

(Shortform note: Some of these generational monikers were coined by Strauss and Howe themselves, specifically the G.I. generation and Millennials. Gertrude Stein is responsible for coining the Lost Generation, and the first known use of the Silent Generation designation was by an unnamed writer in Time magazine in the 1950s. Baby Boomer was first used in the late 1970s by The Washington Post, and Generation X was first used in a photo essay by Robert Capa. The generation after Millennials is generally known as Generation Z, but some other proposed names include Founders, Homelanders, and iGeneration.)

The generations both shape and are shaped by the Turnings as they pass through them. Below, we will explain Turnings and how the generational archetypes play into them.

America’s Most Recent Turnings

The authors published this book in 1997, at which point they explained that the US was nearing the end of a Third Turning. America’s current saeculum began in 1946, just after World War II (America’s most recent Crisis), which is where we’ll start.

The American High: A First Turning

The First Turning of our current saeculum lasted from 1946 to 1964, explain the authors. With the Crisis of the war over, the G.I. generation returned from war with renewed optimism and a sense of collective purpose. They were welcomed back home as brave champions and began forming secure, prosperous families.

(Shortform note: The success of the American High depended largely on the Allies’ victory in World War II. Critics before the war cautioned that a loss would result in America being dismantled and taken over by the victors, which would essentially be the end of the American empire. Modern scholars suggest that although there was very little chance of an Allied loss by the time America entered the war, a loss would have resulted in the complete extermination of Jewish people and large-scale support of Nazis in America. In either case, it would be difficult to term the resulting era a “High” for the general population.)

During this Turning, the elder Lost (Nomad) generation was leading with the wisdom built by living through two world wars and the Great Depression. They willingly and self-sacrificially paid high taxes to support the younger generations. The (Hero) G.I.s in midlife built their nation to its greatest point in history so far. The young adult Silent (Artist) generation married early and avoided risk, working mostly to help the older and younger generations in their efforts rather than pursuing a generational cause of their own.

Prosperity During a High: Will Millennials Be Left Behind?

Experts note a large difference between young adult trajectories in the American High compared to today, which may be attributable to the economic opportunities available to the American High G.I. and Silent generations (that Turning’s midlife and young adult generations, respectively) compared to the opportunities available for today’s young adults, Millennials.

Research shows that greater financial stability results in earlier and more common family-building and child-rearing, which explains the huge rise in birth rates that resulted in the Baby Boomer generation (the offspring of the financially successful G.I. and Silent generations). However, today’s experts point out that Millennials are on track to be the most financially disadvantaged generation in American history.

Even while Boomers and Xennials (today’s elder and midlife generations) were subject to the same economic recessions as Millennials, Boomer and Xennial wages largely recovered, while Millennials’ did not. This is because the recessions disrupted the early careers of Millennials, knocking them off the traditional trajectory of wage growth and wealth accumulation, which they haven’t been able to make up for.

In 2020, despite making up a plurality of the US workforce, Millennials controlled less than 5% of the nation’s wealth. Though a new High should be on its way, experts suggest that Millennials, who will be in the midlife stage at that point, are likely to never recover from the blow to their finances, unlike the previous midlife, Hero generation (G.I.s) who enjoyed great economic prosperity during the American High.

During the American High, trust in government and institutions was high, and governing power was strong and had plentiful resources to implement social change. Income inequality dropped and the middle class flourished. As families grew, their need for housing increased as well, leading to the mass building of suburbs. However, beneath the upbeat mood of the High, racism and sexism brewed, materialism was rampant, and nonconformity was stigmatized.

(Shortform note: The American High may have actually represented a net loss in opportunity for some marginalized groups, as people who entered the workforce during the war were pushed out again in favor of white men. Black women in particular saw greater economic prosperity during the Crisis, as 600,000 of them took over jobs left by soldiers going to war. However, when the war ended and the soldiers returned home, those women lost those jobs and consequently their income despite their integral role in maintaining American industry during the war.)

The Consciousness Revolution: A Second Turning

The Awakening that followed the American High lasted from 1964 to 1984, and the authors termed it the Consciousness Revolution. According to the authors, its beginning was sparked by the assassination of John F. Kennedy at the end of 1963, which shook the nation and incited new social movements rebelling against the now well-established government and social institutions from the High.

Confidence in the nation’s G.I.-built institutions—such as government regulation and spending, labor unions, and corporations—began to waver. People no longer accepted the costs of these institutions, which included the massive power of corporations compared to individuals, police abuse of the poor, and the suffocation of creativity by academia.

(Shortform note: Many of the social movements taking place in this era started as consciousness-raising movements, largely begun by feminist groups. These movements were focused on bringing attention to oppression that people—particularly people in the oppressed group in question—might not be aware of, as opposed to movements that focused on immediate action. Such efforts provided the bedrock for more concrete changes that came later, and consciousness-raising continues to be an important means of promoting modern social movements. The popularization of movements like this in the 1960s and 1970s may be what prompted Strauss and Howe to label this Turning the Consciousness Revolution.)

Boomer Prophets entered young adulthood with no memory of the wartime plights that necessitated these systems. Hero G.I.s (now elders) watched on as the Boomers rebelled against what they had built. Simultaneously, Boomers and the Silent Artist generation (young adults and midlifers) were raising Nomad Xennial children with hands-off parenting styles and little supervision, as the normalization of no-fault divorce led to the highest divorce rates the nation had ever seen.

(Shortform note: No-fault divorce laws allowed spouses to file for a divorce without having to provide evidence that the other spouse did something wrong, whereas prior to the 1970s a couple could only be granted a divorce if one party could be proven to be at fault. The authors suggested that divorce laws would become stricter during the Fourth Turning as a way to reinforce the nuclear family structure, but so far this hasn’t happened. Divorce rates have gone down on their own, though, suggesting that more children are being raised in two-parent homes and that family structures may indeed be getting stronger since the Awakening.)

Violence spread, both in the public eye with the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy, and on a smaller scale with protests against government and institutional overreach. The Vietnam War further eroded public faith in leadership, not only because it lacked the moral righteousness of World War II, but also because the young Boomer generation rejected the idea that duty to the country outweighed individual rights. As with the moon landing, people felt that the resources spent on this endeavor would be better applied on the homefront for ending poverty and social and racial inequality.

(Shortform note: Though the Vietnam War dealt one of the heaviest blows to the public’s trust in the American government, in the early years of the Turning, public sentiment was largely neutral or split on the topic. Historians note that much of the antiwar attitude came from media coverage showing the brutality and cruelty being carried out by American soldiers. The draft was also a major contributor, as people were forced to fight or die for a cause they didn’t believe in. Others acknowledge that, even while it degraded the public’s faith in the government, the war may have helped promote desegregation, as soldiers of different races worked together and built camaraderie and trust between them.)

The clash between social movements and American materialism led to economic conflict in the 1970s. Environmentalist movements called for a reduction in energy consumption and construction, which led to a decrease in economic supply while demand for goods stayed the same. Inflation from fluctuating oil prices added to this economic crisis and resulted in a stagnation of wages that America still hadn’t recovered from by the time of this book’s publishing in 1997.

(Shortform note: Though the authors attribute the 1970s economic crisis—often referred to as the Great Inflation—to environmentalists’ calls for reduced production of goods, others suggest that it was largely the result of monetary policies enacted by the Federal Reserve. In the early 1970s, the Fed lowered interest rates in an attempt to bring the country out of the recession of the 1960s. While these policies succeeded in that goal, some argue that they flooded the economy with too much money, resulting in a nearly two-decade-long crisis that included four economic recessions.)

The focus on the individual created a culture of self-centeredness that rejected the idea of duty to one’s nation. At the beginning of the Awakening, young people’s focus on individual rights related mostly to civil rights and issues of culture. However, as the Turning came to a close, individualist sentiment spread to the realm of politics and economics. Conservatives embraced this new ideology and capitalized on the country’s newfound fierce individualism to reignite the Republican party, electing Ronald Reagan, whose first term brought the end of the Awakening.

(Shortform note: Some argue that Reagan’s presidency is what began the successful dismantling of the institutions established during the American High, as his administration cut over $22 billion of social welfare spending. Though these policies increased poverty and economic inequality, they reflected the renewed American ethos of individualism that has existed since the founding of the nation itself. Additionally, some modern critics suggest that the Reagan era’s embrace and popularization of individualism has led to issues like the massive toll the COVID-19 virus has taken on America, as collective mitigation efforts continue to be overruled by principles of personal liberty and individual responsibility.)

The Culture Wars: A Third Turning

The Culture Wars following the Consciousness Revolution began in 1984 and were still ongoing at the time of this book’s publication in 1997. The authors roughly estimated that it would last through 2005 but acknowledged that it could end a few years earlier or later. During this time, the new system of individualistic values established during the Awakening had become part of mainstream culture.

(Shortform note: In 2020, Neil Howe addressed the events that had taken place since his book’s publication and identified the 2008 financial crisis as the Fourth Turning’s catalyst, which would establish the dates of the Third Turning as 1984 to 2008.)

The elder Silent Artist generation led ineffectually and indecisively during this time.Though this was the era when they should have been dominating the highest leadership roles, they failed to produce a single president during this Turning, a generational anomaly that had never happened before in U.S. history. They instead took on helper roles as White House staff and congresspeople, but the authors note that their generation of leaders has become notorious for working diligently but getting very little done. They explain that, compared to the G.I. leaders in the 1960s, the Silent leaders in the 1980s had twice as many hearings and four times the staff, but only one-third as many laws passed.

(Shortform note: The Silent generation did eventually see a president elected in 2020 with Joe Biden, though as of 2021 they made up only about 7% of Congress, vastly outnumbered by Boomers. Furthermore, accusations of government laziness and inaction have been directed at various administrations for decades but have picked up steam recently, partially as a result of increasing political polarization, which makes it more difficult to reach bipartisan compromises. Biden hasn’t been immune to these accusations, as critics have pointed to a lack of action on his part to stop such changes as the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade. However, supporters of the president have praised his commitment to non-confrontational compromise.)

Meanwhile, Boomer Prophets entered midlife as judgmental leaders heavily fixated on black-and-white values that they were unwilling to compromise on. Xennial Nomads came into adulthood feeling alienated and ignored and with a fragmented generational identity.

(Shortform note: Strauss and Howe’s assessment of Boomers may seem somewhat harsh, but other writers describe the generation similarly, even suggesting that it’s a generation of sociopaths. However, other experts note that animosity between generations is unproductive and fails to account for the ways in which people across the generations support and help each other.)

Trust in the government reached its lowest point in the saeculum, but polls showed a high level of individual self-esteem. People began dividing into groups based on shared interests or characteristics such as gender, race, class, and religion, which led to discord between groups and a lack of unifying public sentiment. Each group saw themselves as victims of their opposing group, and paranoia fed these beliefs. Distrust grew between social groups of every kind.

The three main cultural “wars” during this time were over inclusivity and diversity, religion, and free market economics. Citizens, politicians, and the media all chose sides and stuck to them staunchly. Individuals on both sides of these conflicts viewed the other side with vitriol and deemed them stupid or evil. Voters became more polarized, with polls during the 1994 election showing a greater ideological divide than the nation had ever seen, and the number of independents and nonvoters grew. Politicians and political ads became brutally hostile.

Group Divisions and Polarization

Research shows that humans have a strong tendency to divide into groups that they identify closely with, a tendency which probably developed because it was beneficial when we were evolving to be able to quickly differentiate between people who were like us and people who were different. We often choose these groups based on unifying traits like race or religion, but studies have also shown that we quickly form group identities when assigned to groups based on random criteria and that we view members of our own group more favorably than those in other groups.

Unfortunately, closely identifying with a group can lead us to accept ideas that we hear from other members without examining them closely—a phenomenon known as groupthink—particularly when we hear those ideas from a leader. Some experts suggest that this is what gives politicians the ability to affect people’s behavior so strongly and that this could explain the extreme resistance to mask-wearing and other COVID-19 prevention measures among specific groups.

In The Coddling of the American Mind, Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt explain that American politics over the last few decades has become defined by negative polarization, or the tendency to engage politically based on fear of the other party rather than support of one’s own party. Lukianoff and Haidt note that this type of polarization and fixation on the “evilness” of the opposing group is harmful to democracy and free thought.

Income inequality continued to grow, and homeless people were funneled out of shelters and public spaces into prisons. Companies laid off workers while their stocks continued to grow. Society became cynical, fragmented, and mistrustful—both of other people and of the government. There was a general sense that society was declining and heading toward disaster and there was nothing that could be done about it.

Social Decline Toward the End of the Unraveling

Research shows that America’s income inequality increased by more than 100% between 1989 and 2016 and that Black people disproportionately bear the negative consequences of inequality. Tracking of the homeless population was limited in the 1980s and 1990s, but estimates suggest that today there are more than half a million homeless people living in America. Research shows that experiencing homelessness significantly increases the risk of going to prison and vice versa, a phenomenon the authors allude to. Black people are also overrepresented in the homeless and incarcerated populations.

Other writers in the late 1990s noted that American corporations had begun using mass layoffs as a business strategy to achieve massive financial gains, even though they were experiencing record profits. This trend has continued over the past two decades, and experts note that it negatively affects workers’ morale and loyalty to the company and has damaging psychological effects on the laid-off employees.

Regarding the sense of impending catastrophe, some experts note that today we often romanticize the 1990s as a golden age, but they point out that the issues and mistakes made during that era caused many of today’s most serious problems.

Predictions About the Crisis

The authors predicted that the Fourth Turning—a Crisis—would begin within the first few years of the 21st century, around 2005. Because the catalysts for a Fourth Turning are always foreseeable based on the trends that are established during the Unraveling, the authors make a handful of predictions about what the next catalyst might look like:

A terrorist attack by a foreign group purporting to have nuclear weapons, leading the US to declare war and begin searching people’s homes. Suspicions that the president fabricated the event would lead to a nationwide strike and the loss of foreign capital.

(Shortform note: This prediction bears a striking resemblance to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. As the authors suggest in the book, there were some warnings of this attack in advance, including a memo sent to the FBI by Special Agent Kenneth Williams in July of 2001 warning of a potential terrorist plot by Osama Bin Laden. The memo was not acted upon, and experts have suggested that it could have been used to mitigate or prevent the September 11 attack if it had been dealt with properly. However, Neil Howe has noted that the attack didn’t have the lasting impact of a Crisis catalyst.)

A new, highly contagious virus spreads, resulting in significant deaths and causing the government to create and enforce quarantines. The National Guard is deployed to isolate areas hit hardest by the disease, and the president is pressured to declare martial law.

(Shortform note: As of March 27, 2023, COVID-19 had claimed over 1,150,000 American lives, and though the National Guard was not deployed and martial law was not declared, most state governments issued stay-at-home orders. This pandemic occurred too late in the Turning to serve as the catalyst but still contributed to a major shift in the country’s culture and mood and may comprise part of the Turning’s climax.)

Conflicts in and around Russia result in civil wars and the capture of American diplomats, leading the US to send ships into the Black Sea and Congress to consider reinstating the draft.

(Shortform note: In 2014, Russia annexed Crimea, leading to armed conflicts in the area, and in February 2022, the country invaded Ukraine, sparking a full-scale war. Though the US has limited its involvement to financial and humanitarian aid, a few Americans have been captured by Russia, and some have indeed wondered if Congress may reinstate the draft. This conflict also occurred too late to be the catalyst but may be contributing to the climax.)

The authors note that these exact scenarios are unlikely and that whatever does happen, the nation will be able to mitigate it before it becomes truly devastating. However, it will arise from some problem that the country had failed to deal with soon enough, which will spark outraged calls to action.

(Shortform note: As discussed above, Neil Howe has identified the 2008 financial crisis as the catalyst for this Crisis Turning. As the authors predicted, the nation was able to avoid total cataclysm, but it experienced an undermining of public faith in financial institutions that has continued throughout the Turning.)

After the Catalyst

As a result of the catalyst, the authors predicted that people would lose all faith in the government, struggle financially and begin to panic about their future, and that a recession or depression may occur. People will have to form a new social order, peacefully or otherwise.

One political party will achieve a decisive win early in the Crisis and will maintain its power throughout the Turning. Its leaders will exaggerate and deliberately exacerbate the country’s problems to accelerate change and enact a more and more extreme agenda.

At the beginning of the Turning, income inequality will stop growing. Toward its end, the economy will begin to recover and may become stronger than ever. It will be more unionized and more independent from the global economy. The public will again trust the nation’s institutions and demand that they restrict choices by standardizing certain options in goods and services and by establishing a single dominant political party to relieve people of the onus of having to choose.

The rights of certain groups will come under attack by powerful organizations. Criminal justice will become increasingly harsh, and the harming of innocent people will become acceptable collateral damage for protection against those considered dangerous to society.

What the Authors Got Right—And Wrong

Several of the authors’ predictions about the unfolding of the Fourth Turning haven’t yet come true. In contrast to their prediction about a single party maintaining dominance throughout the Crisis, America saw Republican Donald Trump win after two terms from Democrat Barack Obama, and then another Democrat win in 2020 with Joe Biden.

Additionally, income inequality has not slowed but has instead continued to grow. In 2021, the wealthiest 10% of Americans held more than two-thirds of the nation’s wealth, while the bottom 50% held just 2.5% of the wealth. Union membership has also fallen even though research suggests that public support for unions is nearly the highest it’s ever been.

However, as the authors predicted, attacks on the rights of certain groups have increased in the past few years. In June 2022, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, which guaranteed people the right to abortion. Hundreds of bills targeting LGBTQ+ rights have been introduced by state lawmakers, and hundreds of others have been introduced that seek to impose greater restrictions on voting—measures that have been shown to have a disproportionate impact on Black voters.

Through some combination of larger conflicts, the nation’s issues will coalesce into one large problem that forms the climax of the Crisis. People will unify around this problem, setting aside differences for the purpose of healing the nation and putting it on track for a new rebirth in the upcoming High. Whether the results of the Crisis’s resolution are positive or negative, the nation will be unrecognizable from what it was at the beginning of the Crisis.

(Shortform note: A possible downside of recognizing the pattern Strauss and Howe describe is that people and leaders may be tempted to push the nation toward deliberate disaster in order to hasten the post-Crisis High by exaggerating and worsening the nation’s problems. Some accuse leaders of right-leaning political parties around the world of actively pushing for conflicts to happen for this purpose, calling such an approach disaster nationalism—the promotion of conflict to pave the way for authoritarian leadership in response.)