Ultimately, succeeding generational archetypes attack and weaken institutions in the name of autonomy and individualism, which eventually creates a tumultuous political environment that ripens conditions for another crisis.

[1] In their book The Fourth Turning (1997), the authors expanded the theory to focus on a fourfold cycle of generational types and recurring mood eras[2] to describe the history of the United States, including the Thirteen Colonies and their British antecedents.

[4][5][6][7][8] Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, who graduated from Harvard University with Strauss, called Generations the most stimulating book on American history he had ever read, and even sent a copy to each member of Congress.

In the 2000 book, Strauss and Howe asserted that Millennial teens and young adults were recasting the image of youth from "downbeat and alienated to upbeat and engaged", crediting increased parental attention and protection for these positive changes.

According to historian David Kaiser, who was consulted for the film, Generation Zero "focused on the key aspect of their theory, the idea that every 80 years of American history has been marked by a crisis, or 'fourth turning', that destroyed an old order and created a new one".

The authors posit a pattern of four repeating phases, generational types, and a recurring cycle of spiritual awakenings and secular crises, from the founding colonials of America through the present day.

[1][2] Strauss and Howe define a social generation as the aggregate of all people born over a span of roughly 21 years or about the length of one phase of life: childhood, young adulthood, midlife, and old age.

First, members of a generation share what the authors call an age location in history: they encounter key historical events and social trends while occupying the same phase of life.

Just when society is reaching its high tide of public progress, people suddenly tire of social discipline and want to recapture a sense of "self-awareness", "spirituality" and "personal authenticity".

Four turnings make up a full cycle of circa 85 years,[43] which the authors term a saeculum, after the Latin word meaning both "a long human life" and "a natural century".

[53] The authors say two different types of eras and two formative age locations associated with them (childhood and young adulthood) produce four generational archetypes that repeat sequentially, in rhythm with the cycle of Crises and Awakenings.

The authors describe the archetypes as follows: Prophet (Idealist) generations enter childhood during a High, a time of rejuvenated community life and consensus around a new societal order.

Prophets grow up as the increasingly indulged children of this post-Crisis era, come of age as self-absorbed young crusaders of an Awakening, focus on morals and principles in midlife, and emerge as elders guiding another Crisis.

[57] Nomad (Reactive) generations enter childhood during an Awakening, a time of social ideals and spiritual agendas when young adults are passionately attacking the established institutional order.

[2] Artist (Adaptive) generations enter childhood during a Crisis, a time when great dangers cut down social and political complexity in favor of public consensus, aggressive institutions, and an ethic of personal sacrifice.

[59] According to Strauss and Howe, those who constituted this generation had a sheltered childhood during a bloody civil war and were educated abroad, becoming Greek language tutors, international scholars, poets, prelates, and literate merchants and yeomen.

They spent their childhood amid religious frenzy and widespread erosion of social authority—and came of age in a cynical, post-Awakening era of cut-throat politics and roller-coaster markets.

They regulated commerce, explored overseas empires, built English country houses, pursued science, and wrote poetry that celebrated an orderly universe.

This generation witnessed political turmoil in response to the widespread expansion of European imperialism and the vast social inequalities exacerbated by ruthless competition between rival empires in Europe, the Americas and Asia.

They came of age amid rising national tempers, torrential immigration, rampant commercialism, conspicuous consumerism, declining college enrollment, and economic disputes.

Riesman found in the work an "impressive grasp of a great many theoretical and historical bits and pieces" and Neustadt said Strauss and Howe "are asking damned important questions, and I honor them.

He continued, "these sequential 'peer personalities' are often silly, but the book provides reams of fresh evidence that American history is indeed cyclical, as Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and others have long argued."

Sweeping theories of history are long out of fashion in the halls of ivy, and the authors' lack of academic standing won't help their cause.

[1]In his review for the Boston Globe, historian David Kaiser called The Fourth Turning "a provocative and immensely entertaining outline of American history, Strauss and Howe have taken a gamble".

For The New York Times in 2017, Pulitzer-winning journalist Jeremy Peters wrote that "many academic historians dismiss the book as about as scientific as astrology or a Nostradamus text.

They will clean up entertainment, de-diversify the culture, reinvent core symbols of national unity, reaffirm rituals of family and neighborhood bonding, and re-erect barriers to cushion communities from unwanted upheaval.

"[94] Again in 1993, writing for The Globe and Mail, Jim Cormier reviewed the same book: "self-described boomers Howe and Strauss add no profound layer of analysis to previous pop press observations.

"[97] In 2011, Jon D. Miller, at the Longitudinal Study of American Youth, funded by the National Science Foundation,[98] wrote that their birth year definition (1961 to 1981) of "Generation X" ("13th Gen") has been widely used in popular and academic literature.

"[8] In 2006, Frank Giancola wrote an article in Human Resource Planning that stated "the emphasis on generational differences is not generally borne out by empirical research, despite its popularity".

[105] Will Arbery's play Heroes of the Fourth Turning, first produced at New York's Playwrights Horizons in 2019, is inspired by the theories of Strauss and Howe, and the character Teresa is a vocal proponent of them.