The following is a personal interpretation based on a thesis proposed by Neil Howe and William Strauss in The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy

Cycles of American History: The Four Turnings

Cultural Highs

Awakenings

Unraveling

Spark

Crisis

Crisis and Adjustment

Minorities

Events

Empire

Great Awakening

1730s - 1750s

Tax Revolt

1754 - 1774

 

Boston Tea Party

December 1773

American Revolution

1775 - 1783

The Confederation

[1777] 1781 - 1789

Slavery

1609 – 1861

 

 

Suffragette Movement

1840s - 1919

Domestic

New Republic

1789 - 1820

Transcendentalists

1820s - 1840s

Sectionalism

1845 - 1860

 

Harpers Ferry Raid

October 1859

Civil War

1861 - 1865

Reconstruction

1865 - 1877

Domestic

.

Manifest Destiny

1820s - 1848

 

.

Indian Wars

1867 - 1893

Foreign

Gilded Age

1877 - 1901

Progressive Movement

1901 - 1920

Roaring Twenties

1920 – 1930

 

The Great Crash

October 1929

Great Depression

1930 -1933

New Deal

1933 - 1941

Segregation

&. 

Civil Rights

1890 - 1968

 

 

Women's Movement

1919 - 1968

Domestic

New Manifest Destiny - Imperialism

1880s - 1919

Isolationism

1919 - 1941

 

Pearl Harbor

December 1941

World War II

[1939] 1941 - 1945

Marshall Plan

1947 - 1950s

Foreign

Post War America

1946 - 1963

The Consciousness Revolution

1963 - 1984

The Culture Wars

1984 - 2005

 

2000 Election

November 2000

 

Bailouts & Debt

2005 -

TBA

Domestic

Cold War

1946 - 1969

Détente

1969 - 1989

Uni-polarism

1989 - 2001

 

9 11 Attacks

September 2001

The Islamic Wars

2005 -

TBA

Foreign