The Next Book

I predict that the next book of our most intriguing book club will be The Fourth Turning. The authors of this book are predicting the next phase of our great nation, so I am predicting that we will read it, be frustrated, entertained, and informed by the authors' views of our historical cycles. Will we survive and thrive, or is this the beginning of the end? Only time will tell, but these authors seem to have the answers. What are the answers....well, you'll just have to read the book. Get it read by the 10th of September, and if you read all the chapters you will get a special prize. Then show up for discussion at 7:00pm at the same place-The Minnesota Energy Building. For extra credit read The Wheel of Time fantasy series (all 10,000 pages) written by Robert Jordan, because it sounds kind of like the same idea, but I'm assuming that The Fourth Turning has less magic, swords, and Darkfriends.

Review from Amazon.com
The Fourth Turning continues the project of mapping out the place of generations in history, a project begun in the authors' earlier books Generations and 13th Gen. If millennial fever takes hold, The Fourth Turning may be only the first of an impending wave of pseudo-scholarly tracts prognosticating future (but imminent!) doom as we collectively close the books on this millennium. Those expecting a serious or dry tome might be put off by the authors' taste for bulleted text and catchy phrasings, but can you blame these guys for wanting to make impending peril as exciting as possible? After all, they think we are headed toward "events on par with the Revolution, the Civil War, or World War II" in the next 20 years. Mixing solid understanding of present generational divisions, with some fairly broad generalizations, Strauss and Howe promise to move from history to prophecy.

Synopsis from Wikipedia
The Fourth Turning (1997) is the third book by William Strauss and Neil Howe. It expands the theory they presented in their first book Generations by examining the generations in Anglo-American history since the War of the Roses (1459-1487). It classifies every generation into an archetype explaining the function, motivation and course of each. The second half of the book specifically looks at the five most recent generations (G.I., Silent, Boomers, 13th, and Millennial).[2]

Turnings last about 20 years and always arrive in the same order. Four of them make up the cycle of history, which is about the length of a long human life. The first turning is a High, a period of confident expansion as a new order becomes established after the old has been dismantled. Next comes an Awakening, a time of rebellion against the now-established order, when spiritual exploration becomes the norm. Then comes an Unraveling, an increasingly troubled era of strong individualism that surmounts increasingly fragmented institutions. Last comes the Fourth Turning, an era of upheaval, a Crisis in which society redefines its very nature and purpose.