A Coming Generational Crisis?
William Strauss & Neil Howe's The Fourth Turning
Frank Gregorsky
July 1, 1997
The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy By William Strauss and Neil Howe (Broadway Books, 1997), 352 pp. In 1991, these two Boomers delivered Generations, which gave both depth and splash to generational analysis. Now comes The Fourth Turning, which adds little of substance but much in alarmism—because the Strauss/Howe model is only a decade away from "Crisis." Though the model appears both daunting and pretentious, it works, and here's the short version: A normal lifetime spans four generations, with one from each basic type. After examining how others have cast these types, The Fourth Turning settles on Prophetic, Nomadic, Heroic, and Artistic. With only one exception, the authors find these four types, in that sequence, over five hundred years of Anglo-American history. In America right now, three generations run things: The Silent Generation (born 1925-42), too young for combat in the 1940s and too old to shut down the Pentagon twenty-five years later. An "artistic" bunch, they gave us civil rights, rock 'n' roll, casual sex, subsidized therapy, and a legal system where all comers open a tab so they can argue endlessly. The Boomers (born 1953-60): From Gore and Gingrich to Peggy Noonan and Hillary Clinton to Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, the Boom remains a "prophetic" mass of "narcissistic crusaders" and "mystical militants." Great at speeches and start-ups, lousy at getting big jobs done. And, of course, The Xers: Arriving during 1961-81, they had to grow up fast amidst family dissolution and social escapism. As hardened "nomads," Xers "prefer facts to meaning" and "would rather volunteer than vote." Now think big: In the cycle of nature, observe the authors, "the season that is about to come is always the season farthest ...
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