This cyclical pattern has shaped more than five centuries in Anglo-American history and, more recently, has been shaping the history of many other societies around the world as well. Each cycle (or saeculum) lasts roughly eighty to one hundred years, the length of a long human life. And each saeculum is composed of four eras that we call “turnings” and that can be regarded either as seasons of history or as phases of a person’s life. A turning lasts about twenty years or so, and each turning (spring, summer, fall, winter) always arrives in the same order.
