A fascinating work of global history and look to the future.
The riveting follow-up to The Fourth Turning.
In 1997, entrepreneur and history buff Howe published The Fourth Turning with William Strauss. In that book, they laid out a clear cyclical pattern of Anglo-American history that occurs in units of 80 to 100 years, called a saeculum, which are further divided into roughly two-decade increments called turnings. The First Turning is a High, an upbeat era of strengthening institutions and weakening individualism when a new order arises. The Second, Awakening, is a turbulent era when the new order comes under attack. The Third is an Unraveling, a downcast era of strengthening individualism and weakening institutions when the order decays. The Fourth is a Crisis, when values change and another civic order moves in. Generous with specific examples as well as charts and graphs, Howe delivers a vivid chronicle of 700 years of Anglo-American saecula, emphasizing key events and four archetypes dominating each generation: Prophet, Nomad, Hero, Artist. According to the author, the current saeculum began after World War II, when the U.S. became confident and powerful but also bland and conformist. The second turning, the “Consciousness Revolution,” from the 1960s tumult to the tax revolts of the 1980s, featured personal liberation and increasing disorder. The third, the raucous “Culture Wars,” began as Reagan’s 1980s optimism peaked and “ground to exhaustion with the post-9/11 wars in the Mideast.” We are now embroiled in the fourth, the “Millennial Crisis,” which began with the global market crash of 2008 and continued with the rise of Donald Trump and authoritarian populism. This saeculum, writes Howe confidently, in the early 2030s, and its successor will feature a surprising number of positive features, including America’s continued global leadership. That history runs in cycles has always preoccupied a scattering of historians and attracted a fervent following. Skeptics may roll their eyes, but all readers should enjoy this wild ride by an entertaining writer who seems to have read every relevant source.
A fascinating work of global history and look to the future.Pub Date: July 18, 2023
ISBN: 9781982173739
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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