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

by Neil Howe

Generation X (born 1961−81) today comprises roughly 85 million adults mainly in their forties and fifties. Their first wave, born in the early 1960s, debuted to the public in the mid-eighties as a hardened, throwaway Brat Pack of youth stars in such films as The Breakfast Club and St. Elmo’s Fire. A bit later, they appeared as a new breed of post-Boomer celebrity—all-action, no-nonsense, bottom-line-focused—like Michael Jordan, Michael Dell, Michael J. Fox, and Tom Cruise. In the early nineties, they got their name from a 1961-born British Columbian Doug Coupland, who wrote a sardonic novel drawing a deep divide between his own circle of friends and the Boomers who had come along just before them. The Xers’ last wave, born in 1980 and 1981, were the last teens to graduate from high school before the bursting of the dotcom bubble. Prequel: