Neil Howe, in his apocalyptic bedtime story “The Fourth Turning Is Here,” proposes that American history, like a nervous tick, moves in repeatable cycles. If Neil Howe is to be believed—and why not, since prophets are always more entertaining than accountants—then American history is less a stately march toward progress and more a cosmic game of musical chairs, with the band changing every 20 years and the furniture getting increasingly rickety. According to Howe, our Anglo-American tribe has, for the past half-millennium, been caught in a sort of historical spin cycle.
