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 The Fourth Turning, William Strauss and Neil Howe explain that human history is characterized by a cyclical progression through four “Turnings,” which the authors liken to seasons. Each Turning lasts around 15-25 years (approximately the length of one of four phases of a human life—childhood, young adulthood, middle age, and elderhood) and is defined by the behaviors of the generations passing through them, specifically by how they react to societal changes and events.
The Four Turnings
Like a single phase of a human life, a Turning lasts around 15-25 years. A single cycle of these four Turnings is called a saeculum. Turnings aren’t characterized by the events that occur during them, but rather by society’s reactions to those events. According to the authors, a First Turning is a High, a Second Turning is an Awakening, a Third Turning is an Unraveling, and a Fourth Turning is a Crisis. The saeculum theory is based on a cyclical view of time—the idea that the same themes and types of events recur and will continue to recur throughout history—as opposed to the chaotic theory, which views time as a series of random and unrelated events, or the linear theory, which views time as a non-recurring progression with a definite start and end.
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