This book’s full title is The Fourth Turning: What the cycles of History Tell Us About American’s Next Rendezvous with Destiny. This was a very interesting read and a unique approach to history. However, I have read a lot of history, so I do wonder about their thesis.
It is basically true that people do not change but I doubt you can predict the future from the past. I should also note that Neil Howe has another book out called The Fourth Turning is Here. It seems that people either loved or hated this book. In the reviews you will see that some think it is all nonsense and others think these ideas are great.
The idea of historical cycles is not a new one. If you read anthropology, you will learn that most past societies thought of time as cycler. They lived through repeated cycles of Summer, Fall, Winter, and Spring. Time as linear is a rather new idea.
I think the most interesting review is by Dan Reardon. There is a review on Good Reads by Justin who clearly did not like the idea of cycles of History either. There are other reviews on this site, some loved the book and others hated it. All the reviews on Amazon are the positive type. The reviews on Quora are mostly all critical of this book. There is also a video review of this book at BookLab by Bjorn.
There is an interview of Neil Howe on the YouTube show of On the Margin. This interview is some 50 minutes long. A review of this book by Van Neistant. outlines the story of this book. It is an interesting review. It is only 10 minutes long.
An index of the books I have reviewed are on my website at Books. I have three blogs. The first talks only about specific stocks and is called Investment Talk . The second one contains information on mostly investing and is called Investing Economics Mostly. My last blog is for my book reviews and it is called Non-Fiction Mostly. Follow me on Twitter.
