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

by Neil Howe

Imagine a scenario in which most of history’s “noise” is suppressed. Imagine a single large society that has never had a powerful neighbor and that, for centuries, has remained relatively isolated from foreign interference. Imagine that this society was born modern on a near-empty continent, with no time-honored traditions to restrain its open-ended development. Imagine, finally, that this thoroughly modern society has acquired a reputation for pursuing linear progress—and for suppressing the cycles of nature—unequaled by any other people on earth. From what you know about the saeculum, wouldn’t you suppose that its history would be governed by a cycle of astonishing regularity? Indeed you would. But of course this society is no hypothesis. This society is America.