The Fourth Turning

William Strauss and Neil Howe apply their generational theory to five centuries of history and find a recurring cycle, each roughly the span of a long human life. Every cycle moves through four turnings of about twenty years, always in the same order: a High of confident growth under a new order, an Awakening of spiritual searching and revolt, an Unraveling in which individualism wins out over weakening institutions, and a Crisis, the Fourth Turning. The authors place the America of their day midway through an Unraveling, about a decade short of the next Crisis, and sketch the modern generations from the G.I.s and the Silent to the Boomers, 13ers and Millennials. A sequel, The Fourth Turning Is Here, followed.

Tony Robbins recommended it in Tools of Titans.