The Last Generation Of Truth

Available for the first time in paperback, with a new introduction that reviews related scholarship of the past twenty years, Erich Gruen's classic study of the late Republic examines institutions as well as personalities, social tensions as well as politics, the plebs and the army as well as the aristocracy.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Discover the game-changing theory of the cycles of history and what past generations can teach us about living through times of upheaval—with deep insights into the roles that Boomers, Generation X, and Millennials have to play. First comes a High, a period of confident expansion. Next comes an Awakening, a time of spiritual exploration and rebellion. Then comes an Unraveling, in which individualism triumphs over crumbling institutions. Last comes a Crisis—the Fourth Turning—when society passes through a great and perilous gate in history. William Strauss and Neil Howe will change the way you see the world—and your place in it. With blazing originality, The Fourth Turning illuminates the past, explains the present, and reimagines the future. Most remarkably, it offers an utterly persuasive prophecy about how America’s past will predict what comes next. Strauss and Howe base this vision on a provocative theory of American history. The authors look back five hundred years and uncover a distinct pattern: Modern history moves in cycles, each one lasting about the length of a long human life, each composed of four twenty-year eras—or “turnings”—that comprise history’s seasonal rhythm of growth, maturation, entropy, and rebirth. Illustrating this cycle through a brilliant analysis of the post–World War II period, The Fourth Turning offers bold predictions about how all of us can prepare, individually and collectively, for this rendezvous with destiny.

Brinn, a small Ibalexan, is the last of his kind. After his world is destroyed, he is rescued by the Guardians of Eternal Life, a race of benevolent super beings who have mastered immortality, resurrection, and creation itself. Billions of years ago, they were once known as human. Humanity has emerged into the New Epochal, a newly born universe created from an ekpyrotic big bang. The Guardians, stewards of the universe, hold the Principal Cause above all things: Life, a creation of Life, creates Life, and Life lives forever. The Guardians call Epsilon Truthe, a white dwarf star, their new home. From there, they have spread out across the galaxy to further the Principal Cause. But one amongst them dares to challenge the chancery laws of his people. Now a rogue, exiled Guardian, he sets out on a campaign of dissent and sabotage. Soon, he has recruited a full third of his fellow Guardians to his cause, and a once-united Epsilon Truthe finds itself in conflict. Brinn is soon propelled to the center of attention as the representative for an ancient alien known as the Archxion. This intervention is timely, for the Guardians adversary has united with a nihilist faction of the Angelian Conglomerate, a group of races who were once perceived as angels by Terran Humanityand these Angelian separatists consider the Guardians an infestation of their domain. Whats more, they vow to not allow Terran Humanity, or any race for that matter, to transit to the next epochal cycle of the universe.