noteworthy wrote:
ubernoir wrote:
in light of recent discussions about party politics this piece particularly struck me
The theory exercised in this article is based on earlier work by Neil Howe and William Strauss, published in 1991 as Generations: The History of America's Future,1584 to 2069.
Here's the book jacket on the paperback:
Hailed by national leaders as politically diverse as former Vice President Al Gore and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Generations has been heralded by reviewers as a brilliant, if somewhat unsettling, reassessment of where America is heading.
William Strauss and Neil Howe posit the history of America as a succession of generational biographies, beginning in 1584 and encompassing every-one through the children of today. Their bold theory is that each generation belongs to one of four types, and that these types repeat sequentially in a fixed pattern. The vision of Generations allows us to plot a recurring cycle in American history -- a cycle of spiritual awakenings and secular crises -- from the founding colonists through the present day and well into this millenium.
Generations is at once a refreshing historical narrative and a thrilling intuitive leap that reorders not only our history books but also our expectations for the twenty-first century.
They did not win over the folks at Publishers Weekly:
Ex-Capitol Hill aides Strauss and Howe analyze American history according to a convoluted theory of generational cycles, concocting a chronicle that often seems as woolly as a newspaper horoscope.
The authors of this Washington Post article have a new book of their own coming out next month, entitled Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future of American Politics, which carries an endorsement from Howe and Strauss:
Millennial Makeover builds a strong case for how today's rising generation is poised to become a political powerhouse, re-energizing civic spirit and transforming both the substance and process of American politics. With new technologies, attitudes, and agendas, this generation could define the twenty-first century just as fundamentally as the G.I. Generation defined the twentieth century. Winograd and Hais build a strong, historically rooted case for how this could unfold.
i think i share a general anglo-saxon distaste for grand sweeping historical theories (a generational typology seems grandiose) and regard such things as "french" since the french famously love this type of theorising
however it is interesting, although sometimes facts get shoehorned into theory,
perhaps this particular theory, if it has real substance, is related to the cliche that each generation is in reaction (in rebellion) to the previous
