The Fourth Turning Is Here

What the Seasons of History Tell Us about How and When This Crisis Will End

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 “riveting and revelatory” (Tony Robbins) prophecy for how our present era of unrest will resolve over the next ten years—and what our lives will look like afterward.

Thirty 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 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.

“Big history and bold futurology” (The Wall Street Journal), The Fourth Turning Is Here takes us 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 ahead.

Critic reviews

“There is always profit in reading prophets…. The Fourth Turning Is Here is big history and bold futurology.”
—The Wall Street Journal

“Riveting and revelatory.... A road map to a future that's challenging yet also full of hope.”
—Tony Robbins, New York Times bestselling author of Life Force

“The most difficult thing in the world is to see history as we are living it, and no one does that with clearer eyes and a fuller heart than Neil Howe. The Fourth Turning is Here is a tour de force.”
—Ben Hunt, creator of Epsilon Theory

“Neil Howe always sees things about America that other observers miss, harnessing a remarkable command of history and demography to help us think more clearly about current problems and summoning a remarkable imagination to help us envision the big changes ahead.”
—Nicholas Eberstadt, political economist at the American Enterprise Institute

“Driven by a deep sense that American democracy is at serious risk… [yet Howe predicts that] out of today’s polarization and partisanship will come a new egalitarian, outward-facing, confident and unified America.”
—Francis Fukuyama, The New York Times

“A vitally important book.”
—Michael J. Meese, PHD, brigadier general, US Army (retired)

“Neil Howe is a genuis at mapping the present and future. This book explains how we arrived at today's era of crises, polarization, and conflicts. Fortunately, Howe also shows us the promised land that awaits on the other side.”
—Jack A. Goldstone, Professor of Public Policy, George Mason Univeristy

“Arresting, mind-opening, and endlessly stimulating, The Fourth Turning Is Here is a monumental achievement. It's a big, complex, challenging book, daunting in its sweep and erudition, but well worth the effort.”
—Amy Chua, Yale Law Professor and New York Times bestselling author of Political Tribes

“The riveting follow-up to The Fourth Turning…. All readers should enjoy this wild ride by an entertaining writer who seems to have read every relevant source. A fascinating work of global history and look to the future.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Far-ranging [and] intriguing.”
—Publishers Weekly

Brilliant work

Read this book with a 30,000 ft perspective. If you do, you will find it to be one of the most important book you’ve ever read.

A very well detail soft spoken language that reach any and all audience

Loved it from beginning to end. I went through all the emotions as if I were watching a movie

incredibly insightful

what a great read to help understand the season of history we are living through. while frightening in the potential of what we are seeing it is comforting to know that we as a peoples have been through this before and while it may bring chaos it may also bring opportunity. what a great read and way to look at the long strokes of modern history to help us understand where we are going. well worth the time to listen.

Christianity is not "linear"

So far it's a great arc but I could not help but comment on his presentation of Christianity as a linear story arc. Traditional Christianity, being both medieval western Christianity as well as Orthodox Christianity still today quite clearly reject the linear arc he presents. In Orthodox Christianity we explicitly state that "Christ was crucified before the foundations of the Earth" and men today are simply acting in accordance with those pre completed actions in the exact manner he describes for the framework of ancient peoples.

Mind blowing

Although I studied generational demographics in college, this far surpasses anything I have read. the amount of detail Howe shares really helps you see all of the cycles and how each of us fit into these different "seasons." The book is VERY long and not for the faint of heart, and you'll wonder even halfway through why you're still reading. However, I promise it all starts coming together in the last 1/3rd of the book. It's worth it!