The Fourth Turning Is Here: What the Seasons of History Tell Us about How and When This Crisis Will End

Written by Neil Howe

Narrated by Neil Howe

The visionary behind the bestselling phenomenon The Fourth Turning looks once again to America’s past to predict our future in this startling and hopeful prophecy for how our present era of civil unrest will resolve over the next ten years—and what our lives will look like once it has.

Twenty-five years ago, Neil Howe and the late William Strauss dazzled the world with a provocative new theory of American history. Looking back at the last 500 years, they’d uncovered a distinct pattern: modern history moves in cycles, each one lasting roughly eighty to one hundred years, the length of a long human life, with each cycle composed of four eras—or “turnings”—that always arrive in the same order and each last about twenty years. The last of these eras—the fourth turning—was always the most perilous, a period of civic upheaval and national mobilization as traumatic and transformative as the New Deal and World War II, the Civil War, or the American Revolution.

Now, right on schedule, our own fourth turning has arrived. And so Neil Howe has returned with an extraordinary new prediction. What we see all around us—the polarization, the growing threat of civil conflict and global war—will culminate by the early 2030s in a climax that poses great danger and yet also holds great promise, perhaps even bringing on America’s next golden age. Every generation alive today will play a vital role in determining how this crisis is resolved, for good or ill.

Illuminating, sobering, yet ultimately empowering, The Fourth Turning Is Here takes you back into history and deep into the collective personality of each living generation to make sense of our current crisis, explore how all of us will be differently affected by the political, social, and economic challenges we’ll face in the decade to come, and reveal how our country, our communities, and our families can best prepare to meet these challenges head-on.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
• Release date: Jul 18, 2023
• ISBN: 9781797157795

Neil Howe

Neil Howe is a historian, economist, and demographer who writes and speaks frequently on generational change, American history, and long-term fiscal policy. He coauthored seven books with William Strauss, including Generations, 13th Gen, The Fourth Turning, and Millennials Rising. In 1991, Howe and Strauss coined the term “Millennial Generation.” Howe’s other books include On Borrowed Time (with Peter G. Peterson) and The Graying of the Great Powers (with Richard Jackson). He is managing director of demography for Hedgeye, an investment advisory firm. He is also a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and at the Global Aging Institute. He grew up in California and holds graduate degrees in history and economics from Yale University. He lives with his family in Great Falls, Virginia.

Reviews for The Fourth Turning Is Here

[Leslie Charles · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Several years ago I read The Fourth Turning (Howe, Strauss) and in the past four years I've found myself wishing for a follow up. And here it is! The detail, scope, clarity and structure of this book is impressive. So is the fact that Howe reads the text himself. If you ever worry (or have worried) about where our society is headed and why, read this book.

[Christy Spear · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Fascinating look at the current upheaval, looking back through history.

[jepurdue · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I would not waste your time with this book. I only have an hour left and I have found it to be incredibly wordy while saying very little but using pretentious words at every turn. It seems as if the writer was pleasuring himself while writing this book from how little substance it manages to get across