The Fourth Turning: What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny

by William Strauss

regime implants. (Artists enter elderhood; Prophets, midlife; Nomads, young adulthood; and Heroes, childhood.) The Fourth Turning is a Crisis—a decisive era of secular upheaval, when the values regime propels the replacement of the old civic order with a new one. (Prophets enter elderhood; Nomads, midlife; Heroes, young adulthood; and Artists, childhood.) Late Medieval Half Saeculum: Turnings The Retreat from France {Third Turning, 1435-1459) was an era of dynastic decline and civil disorder. In 1435, not long after Joan of Arc's execution, the English withdrew from Paris for the last time. In the 1440s, they were pushed out of France on all fronts. Thus ended the Hundred Years' War. Meanwhile, the weak rule of young Henry VI eroded central authority in England. By the 1450s, noble houses flouted the law, vied for power, and engaged in private wars with impunity. Arthurians entering childhood The Wars of the Roses (Fourth Turning, 1459-1487) began with an irrevocable break between the ruling houses of Lancaster and York. After a bloody civil war, Yorkist kings (Edward IV, Edward V, Richard III) mostly prevailed in reigns that were punctuated with invasions and rebellions. At Bosworth Field (in 1485), Henry Tudor defeated Richard III and crowned himself Henry VII, founder of a new royal dynasty. Two years later he defeated a pretender at the Battle of Stoke, which won him the enduring confidence of his subjects. Arthurians entering young adulthood Humanists entering childho...

Turnings and generations