Highs

The addition of 1968 to The Grid means five hundred years of history is complete for two Turnings, the Awakening plus the Crisis. Hopefully the descriptions make each year memorable for at least one reason. 

Five hundred years, two Turnings, each repeating every 90-100 years, has resulted in twelve specific years showing up on The Grid. There are roughly 40 years between successive dates. Someone who can keep track of these 12 events should, on average, be able to identify an interesting historical marker within 20 years of any other date of interest. (Similarly, the birthday of anyone reading this can be found no more than 20 years from one of the recent dates  - the worst case being 1988, 20 years from both 2008 and 1968.) Knowing when Crisis (4T) and Awakenings (2T)  happen should give some general idea of the state of the nation at that time.  At least, they should give some indication of whether the country is working together or flying apart.

As the other two Turnings are completed, that distance will be reduced even more.

The next section to be done here is the First Turning. It's also known as the High, in part because of the exuberance felt by those who were directly involved in the great victories of the Fourth Turning. As the Crisis winds down, a nation that is no longer interested in war is still supporting a substantial governmental infrastructure.  In the absence of external conflict, this is used to support alternative nation building efforts, such as exploration and infrastructure. Remarkable feats are attempted - towering monuments, exploration across vast empty areas, flights into space. The concentration of resources, however, also enables corruption - which, it will probably be realized,  often stretches back to the Crisis period. And there may be efforts to continue the equivalent of war by other means in the form of attacks on perceived enemies of the state - witch hunts, metaphorical or actual. 

First Turnings can also be a view into the path that countries take between the Crisis and the Awakening. The first one, for example, is in 1506: 14 years after the Reconquista, 18 years before Henry the Eighth's break with the church - but only 9 before Martin Luther started the Reformation. One of Luther's specific complaints can itself be traced to this very event....

Bad

I will occasionally toss out the word Bad when referring to Nomads - Reactives, that is, those who were children during an Awakening, folks like Generation X. Usually I will let the word speak for itself, capitalized to indicate I Mean Something In Particular. Which I do.

 Both Generations and the follow-up The Fourth Turning have charts that aim to describe attributes of the different generational archetypes. (In the former, it's called "Peer Personalities by Generational Type" on page 365 while the latter is "Archetypes in History" on page 98.) One of the strengths of the model is the recognition that people change over time, as does how they are perceived. Some of the change is the move from one stage in life to another: Actions that are acceptable while learning life in youth cannot often be carried along when raising new life in adulthood. Other changes reflect the attitude of the current Turning, like mid-life Heroes basking in the afterglow of the High contrasted with mid-life Nomads trying to survive the Crisis.

In any case, the charts give one-word descriptions of the archetypes at different stages. To describe the Hero "reputation as child," the word given is "good," while Artists are described as "placid" and Prophets as "spirited."*

The corresponding word used for us Nomads?  "Bad."

While it may not be exactly as intended, it also works out that "bad people" in stories - whether it's books, movies, or television - are often Nomads. The elder daughters in King Lear, Beavis & Butthead, Lt.Col Cage (who tries blackmailing a general to avoid combat) in Edge of Tomorrow - the best that can be said at the start is that they may strive for redemption. And could even succeed. 

If you see a bad person, there's some better-than-usual chance you are looking at a Nomad. Which is why I'll often use Bad as shorthand for - well, for everything here in this post, and on those charts, and really in most of what Strauss&Howe have to say about these cohorts.

The U2 song doesn't really have much to do with this. It's not about Gen Xers in particular, although it seems likely that many of the heroin addicts from whom it drew inspiration were of that cohort. Although it could be a theme song for our generation.

* In Generations, the Prophet archetype is called the "Idealist" and instead of "spirited" they were "stormy." The (Boomer) authors presumably considered this change an improvement.

Grid

The human mind can hold about 7 items at a time in short-term memory.

That means it should be no problem to keep track of Four Turnings and what they mean.

And for each one, you can easily keep track of seven events - seven particular occurrences during Crisis periods,  another seven during Awakenings, etc.

Which yields straightforward access to [seven times four equals] twenty-eight items of interest.

If those 28 items are in distributed fairly evenly by year, that's enough to hold onto about 500 years of history at once - with gaps that are only a few decades at the most.

And if you can find something district and memorable about those years, you can place most of what happened across that half-millennium period near one of these events.

(Hamlet was written around 1601. This is 13 years after yesterday's entry, 1588, the Defeat of the Spanish Armada. And there is likely some connection, there.)

That can be enough to know what's going on for that whole time. 

Which could be cool.

Some of the years in the grid below link to previous posts. Others will be filled in. A few could change.

To be continued. 

	High	Awakening	Unraveling	Crisis
	First	Second	Third	Fourth
				1492
	1506	1534	1580	1588
	1601	1621	1666	1675
	1692	1741	1752	1779
	1806	1827	1848	1861
	1869	1896	1927	1933
	1947	1974	1994	????

Layers

There hasn’t been a What In the World Are You Talking About post in a while. For a different way of looking at it, here are some primary assertions of the Strauss & Howe model:

Assertion 1: History is cyclical, with about a 90 year period between one Crisis (American Revolution, for example) and the next (American Civil War).

This predates Strauss & Howe, with Schlesinger among previous proponents. The pattern is obvious enough once pointed out, and can be seen going back at least 500 years in Anglo-American history, with similar patterns seen in the Roman Republic/Empire, Russia, and others. The Strauss & Howe term for this cycle, which ranges from 85 to 100 years, is a Saeculum.

Assertion 2: Within the 90 year cycle is a four-part sub-cycle consisting of the Crisis, the High (triumphant period post-Crisis), Awakening (spiritual tumult in reaction to the stasis of the High) and Unraveling (period of low institutional strength after the Awakening). 

The Strauss & Howe term for these sub-cycles is a Turning. Each of the sub-cycles is 20-25 years in length - i.e. each takes up about the same fraction of of the larger cycle.

Assertion 3: People who are children during a particular Turning  are affected by the overall events of that Turning, and further by the events in the Turnings after, to a point of having 1) a common outlook and 2) similar personality traits as a group.

The first book on this subject was called Generations - not Cycles or Crises or Saeculums or Turnings. The idea of cohorts - groups of people - united by shared historical perspective is most central to the model - without that, it isn't quite what Strauss & Howe proposed.

Assertion 4: The Saeculum, Turnings, and Generations reinforce each other, enabling the overall cycle to be enduring and self-supporting. The Crisis occurs when Heroes are Young Adults (20-40), Nomads are Midlife (40-60) and Prophets are Elders (60-80).  The Crisis ends one Saeculum and, when it ends, starts a new one. The next formation of generational types introduces the next Turning, which results in a new generational cohort, which will eventually support a later Turning. 

Strauss & Howe's explanation for how this can continue involves the related periods of lifespan and childhood. The Saeculum lasts as long as a full human life, and the Turning as long as the period from birth to adulthood. Since the ratio between those periods is 4 to 1, there are four Turnings in each Saeculum. (Although there's more to it than that.)

This layered approach isn't quite how it's explained in the books. They are, after all, attempting to support the complete theory, which has a focus on generational cohorts. And this summary doesn't go into the American Civil War Anomaly, where the cycle appears to break down (but then recover ... eventually). Still, one could accept the first assertion and none of the rest. Or the first and second, without the third and fourth. One can predict that a Crisis is likely without acknowledging anything else about Strauss & Howe.  Although the other aspects appear to offer the opportunity for improved understanding of What's Really Happening.

Stories

The post about the movie The Apartment made a reference to characters being "doomed" or "damned."  This is in reference to a theory that each generation has a particular type of story, and that good/popular/profitable stories fit well with their target generation.

(There will be a longer post on this at some point, but for the moment the reference should be explained - at least a little.)

Captain America: The First Avenger, as noted, is a Hero story, with the good guys winning through teamwork and sacrifice. Reactive stories - like Chef but also like the earlier Favreau, Smith, and Tarantino films - are about redemption: Reactives start out Bad, and spend their energies becoming better people. Prophets are able to beat the bad guys, just as Heroes do, but they can do it on their own, through sheer moral superiority.

Artist stories, though, seem to be about The Doomed and the Damned. Either there are people who will never be able to move past their sins, or those who will be unable to survive because of the world they live in - presumably populated with the first type of people. Rizzo Ratso and Joe Buck are Doomed. Michael Corleone is Damned, everyone around him Doomed.  Bonnie & Clyde are both Doomed and Damned.

In the Hero-written-and-directed Apartment, on the other hand, C.C. Baxter and Fran Kubelik appear as if they will survive - they aren't Doomed. Actually, it appears that they will win, even if it requires sacrificing Baxter's executive washroom key, his twenty-seventh floor office, and his job.

Math

Folks following this model of history can often find themselves making unexpected mathematical jumps. Like a reaction to this headline:

Indiana Jones? FBI finds thousands of artifacts in 91-year-old's home

The natural reaction for everyone, of course, is to say “Indiana Jones? He can’t be 91 - he’s Lost Generation, born late 19th century, the youngest of which anywhere is 113 years old by now. A 91-year-old was born in 1923 or 1924 - that’s GI Generation, and nearly at the end of it as well.”

For those who didn’t realize when Indiana Jones was born, there are a couple of ways to identify his birthdate, some rougher than others. The first movie gives a date of 1936. If Jones didn’t look like he was in his late 30s/early 40s, one could infer that from his holding a professorship. Either way, that has him born in the 1890s. (Or you could check Harrison Ford’s birthdate, see that the movie came out in 1981, and calculate from there - but folks get cast in movies for different reasons than being the correct age.) Mostly, though - like other 1930s serial heroes - Indiana Jones is a classic Reactive/Nomad: Living in interesting times, self-sufficient, pragmatic - and with morally questionable attributes, as noted by both Marion and Belloq.

For those who didn’t realize it MATTERED when he was born...well, yes, it’s fundamental to the model. The primary concept is that people alive during a particular time are all affected by events during that time, and the specific effects are dependent on what stage of life they are in. Young adults - who can take direct action with regards to a Crisis (for example) -  will react differently than children, who are subject to the actions of others.  The different generations can be completely reduced to people born during specific timespans. 

Whether all people in a generation really match the archetypes is a different question.  It works for him, though: With a (clearly Missionary Generation) father focused - quite literally - on the Holy Grail, Indiana rebels via an archeological career that does not require a spiritual component. We see him with ancient pagan idols, neolithic tombs, Egyptian hieroglyphics, but neither the Ark nor any of the other relics he later pursues are artifacts of his religion - if any. He is only trying to save the world.

Fourth

And now it comes back to the Fourth Turning, the Crisis, where this blog started. Which also means there's not a lot more to say besides what has already been covered. Using the format as for the last three, though:

The Third is about freedom and individualism, with institutions as weak as they ever are. The problem with weak institutions is that big problems can be avoided, missed - ignored. During a two-decade period, the marketplace and individuals have been solving problems easily amenable to such solution. 

Other problems remain unsolved, like "Should owning human beings be allowed." Or "Who should be responsible for the defense - and associated costs (taxation) - of the American colonists?"  As for the previous Fourth, it could be said it was about defining the relationship between government and the marketplace, between complete control (USSR), ownership of the means of production (Axis) and GENERALLY laissez-faire* relationships (US and UK).  Just ask Gödel: you can't expect the marketplace to fix problems that are within the marketplace. And when problems like this get big enough, they eventually come down to who can impose their will through force. 

Which is why identifying the Fourth Turning usually comes down to:

WAR: a war that everyone is involved in, one with a no-kidding winner and a definite loser, one that changes who is in charge and why. 

This isn’t especially helpful until afterwards, and the peak of Crisis periods is often near the end. Until then, the identifiers previously noted can be helpful. When looking back, though, it’s so overpowering an indicator that it’s difficult to pay attention to much else. Although Strauss and Howe also mention that immigration falls during the Crisis, after peaking during the Third.

* It's difficult to say "capitalism" with a straight face when Roosevelt had been setting up new government systems on a regular basis since March 1933, and since the manufacturing power of the country was made available to the government completely in support of the war effort. Nonetheless, it wasn't anything like any of the Axis countries, much less the Soviet Union. 

Third

The Third Turning can be conspicuous by its absence. It is often quickly skipped over in history class, as it doesn't have events that fit the usual flow. Since it's after the end of the Second, institutions have been weakened, attacked, even torn down. Personal freedom moves to its highest point, and people make use of it. That makes it difficult to set up a cohesive narrative. 

One can talk about the Civil War in terms of North and South: “The South wanted to keep slavery so it set up ways for it to expand but Republicans were elected by Northern states on a keep-it-contained platform so then the South seceded.” Similar descriptions about “The Colonists and Great Britain,” “The Protestants and the Catholics,” “The Axis and the Allies” can be used for other Crisis periods.  Institutions are at their strongest, then, so it makes sense to talk in terms of Japan and America rather than, say, Hirohito and Roosevelt. During the Third, when institutions are weak and social structures are in disarray, individuals start poking out more. From 1992-1996, American political discourse was more often about “Clinton and Gingrich” than “Democrats and Republicans.” With more actors on the stage, the plots become more fragmented and harder to tie together. From 1929 to 1945 can be effectively summarized as “The Great Depression and World War II.” while 1989 to 2005 would miss a lot if described as “The end of the Cold War and the rise of the Internet and the Gulf War’s role in the increase of militant Islam lead to invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.” (And even that one isn’t unified at all.)

The way around this is to embrace the individualism inherent in the period. How three guys influenced film says a lot about what was happening in the mid-Nineties. Isaac Newton singlehandedly changed physics, astronomy, and mathematics. Everyone remembers the one guy who crossed the Atlantic on his own. Stop trying to make sense of anything but the fact that people have an exceptional amount of freedom...for a little while. 

In the Third Turning, it's  also common to see "vibrant" economies: The dot-com era. The Roaring Twenties. The Forty-Niners. People can make a lot of money if they get in early enough, and people try. Still, the fortunes made aren't always as real as they look. It’s an interesting time, if you know where you are and what to look for.

Second

The Second Turning is also known as the Awakening, like the Great Awakening of the early 18th century. It’s a time of spiritual, moral, and religious tumult, an inward-looking mirror of the Crisis. Youth is celebrated, convention and tradition less so. It can be considered a reaction to the corruption and blandness of the First.  

During a Second Turning, expect to see:

Religious/spiritual symbolism and rhetoric: William Jennings Bryan spoke of a Cross of Gold. Martin Luther King went to the mountaintop. Martin Luther himself posted 95 Theses.  Whether talking about economics, justice, or religion itself, religion and spirituality are a frequent theme in the Awakening.  While all institutions will start weakening around this time, religious institutions are often under the heaviest attack.

Crowds: In his autobiography, Benjamin Franklin mentions attending a revival presided over by George Whitefield, and estimated that (as reported) thirty thousand could easily have heard him at once. Hundreds of thousands showed up at Woodstock. Whatever might be worth saying is worth being heard by a lot of people.

Youth: Bryan was barely old enough to be president when he won the Democratic nomination in 1896. Franklin was a few years younger than that in Whitefield’s crowd. And these are the old fogies in Awakening times. The past is the past, the future belongs to the young. (This is not always a good thing.)

Speeches and such: “Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God.” “The Cross of Gold.” (“I Have a Dream” misses by only by a few months, as Strauss & Howe consider the last Second Turning to have started after Kennedy’s assassination.) “The Liberator.” People will note and remember what was said.

First

After casual assertions that Russia and the Ukraine are entering a Second Turning, it is perhaps time to explain how that could be so. And to describe how sheep’s bladders may be employed to prevent earthquakes...er, that is, how to identify the Four Turnings. One at at time...

The Four Turnings are a cycle, so that the First Turning follows the Fourth. In the Fourth, there are massive and usually violent changes, while institutions - like government, large companies, army/navy/air force/marines - become strong as people look to get big jobs done. When the big work is done, though, the institutions are still strong for a while. While people are glad that a major job has been completed, the ability to do less pressing but still worthwhile pursuits beckons. 

In the First Turning, therefore, we often see

Exploration and Discovery: 1492 was the year that Ferdinand and Isabella finalized the Reconquista. A decades-long period of war was over, Spain was a regional power, but there wasn’t anyone to fight, anymore. And then this italian merchant shows up suggesting a new way to get to the Indies... After the Revolutionary War came Lewis and Clark (1804). After World War II,  the Marianas Trench (1960). 

Public works: Another way to use up excess enthusiasm is to point resources at big, popular, helpful projects.  Consider something like the Interstate Highway System (1956) , allowing easy automobile transport from New York to Los Angeles.  Or buying up a chunk of the continent, as Jefferson did with the Louisiana Purchase 

However, the combination of exuberance and strong institutions also lead naturally to

Corruption: Those public works don’t fund themselves, nor do the institutions behind them. It is easy (and unfortunately common) for the large sums of money required by governments, companies, unions, etc. in the Fourth Turning to be siphoned away by those with connections.  The Transcontinental Railroad - and the associated public subsidies - led to the Credit Mobilier scandal, and the general post-war atmosphere of corruption was described by Mark Twain in "The Gilded Age."  

Witch hunts: Too often, one of those aforementioned worthwhile pursuits is finding new people to fight. And so much the simpler if those people can’t easily fight back. Communists in 1947, Jews in 1492, actual witches in 1692....

So how does this suggest that Russia is finishing their First and heading into their Second Turning? For various reasons, it appears their last Fourth Turning ended (as did the Soviet Union) in 1991. While it’s a little too cynical to call the subsequent privatization of industry a public work, it was certainly either source or evidence of significant corruption. And, as previously noted, that corruption is leading to exactly the sort of demonstrations that symbolize a Second Turning. 

Explaining

Another attempt to Explain It All, as anyone who tries to read more than a day or two here will be hit with a lot of jargon that is too useful to lose. Here goes:

Strauss & Howe set up a theory (or model) of history that includes the following structures:

There's a 80-100 year cycle called the Saeculum.  The current ("Millennial") Saeculum started after the end of World War II, and will be concluding in about 10-15 years. 

Within the Saeculum, there are  20-25 year sub-cycles called Turnings. Looking back through history, we see them repeating, in the same order, going back at least 500 years.

1. First Turning - High - exuberance and exceptionalism; conformity and corruption  - most recent: 1946-1963
2. Second Turning - Awakening - spirituality and hope; hypocrisy and disappointment - most recent: 1964-1984
3. Third Turning - Unraveling - freedom and opportunity; uncertainty and fear - 1985-2007?
4. Fourth Turning - Crisis - excitement and creation ; war and destruction; previously 1929-1945, but also our current turning: 2008?-2030?

People born during a given Turning experience many of the same historical events around the same period of their lives, giving them broadly similar outlooks. These cohorts are called Generations, and each is associated with the following Archetypes and Turnings:

Prophet - raised during High - “Boomers” - Current ages: 53-70 years

Nomad - raised during Awakening - “Generation X” - 33-52 years

Hero - raised during Unraveling - mostly “Millennials”  8-32, a few GI Generation > 87 years

Artist - raised during Crisis - “Homelanders” < 8 and “Silent” 71-86 years

The recurring cycles of generations help reinforce and perpetuate the Turnings, and vice-versa. The repeating nature means that we can expect, for example,  a High to begin in the late 2020s, bringing both positives (new exploration!) and negatives (metaphorical (generally) witch hunts. Sooner than that, of course, we can similarly predict a massive war as part of the Crisis. 

But if you are here, you must have known that already.

Identifiers

Here's the official word per LifeCourse.com

1) "Prophets enter elderhood, Nomads enter midlife, Heroes enter young adulthood."

2) "America's institutional life is torn down and rebuilt from the ground up"

3) This is a "response to a perceived threat to the nations very survival"

4) "Civic authority revives”

5) "Cultural expression finds a community purpose"

6) "People begin to locate themselves as members of a larger group

7) The Crisis eventually becomes a "founding moment," "refreshing and redefining the national identity."

Unfortunately, 1 is often tautological: If you are in the Crisis, this is your generational constellation because when you are in this generational constellation you are in the Crisis. There is probably something that can be done there to quantify, say, how many of the Prophets have entered elder hood -- when the first one crosses the line isn’t as important as when n% have crossed the line. And if something indicates that no more Nomads are having children are starting new jobs, or when the youngest Civics are of draft age, we can probably predict....something.

For 2, we can look for places where there are radical changes in institutions. If the NSA - formed very shortly after the end of the last Crisis - gets completely redone, we can propose that this is expected, here in the Crisis.

Isn’t everything a “perceived threat” any more? Yeah, that’s the cynical Xer in me... 3 can perhaps be used to distinguish between events that are short-term or political in nature and those that really are Crisis related.

“Civic authority” has to be in comparison to the previous Turnings’ reliance on personal authority, moving from In Me I Trust to In Us We Trust. It doesn’t have to be governmental, and particularly doesn’t have to be the Federal government. This is a part that may be tricky to see, since it could be anywhere from the consolidation of Federal power in the American Civil War to the rejection of British power in the Revolutionary War. The Affordable Care Act is certainly a move back toward civic authority, and a major change in how government interacts with We The People, but that it doesn’t feel to me like a reaction to a threat. I expect the reaction TO the ACA to be the more Crisis-worthy moment, that socialized medicine will be seen as the greater threat.

“Cultural expression” and “community purpose” - I’m not sure what this is supposed to mean, even if I do think we see in culture a reflection of the current Turning. I’ll grant that “Casablanca” does feel this way, and I expect that “The Best Years of our Lives” does, too. Does “Fantasia,” though (from 1940)? How about “The Thin Man” (1934)? When is this expected to start? “The Hurt Locker” might count. So, too, might “The Hunger Games” and its sequels.

“Members of a larger group” is something that can be identified, at least. It seems related to the “Civic authority” item, and the tricky part is determining what groups are forming and why people see themselves there.

For The Founding Moment, no doubt we will have to wait until after the  peak to realize.  The rest of these, though, have something to work with.

Theory

Because this is a seat-of-the-pants sort of blogging, not a painstakingly researched investigation into particular areas, it has naturally ended up with what is most natural for my writing style. And when writing about generations, that means casually using the jargon that Strauss & Howe put together. So I have 3 days of “Reactives in the Awakening” posts without any explanation on Reactives or Awakenings. If you are here, I have to expect you know about them. Further, I can’t quite take the time to cross-reference every fundamental principle - if this was a physics blog, I would expect you to know the difference between a proton and an electron, not to mention a positron.

Still, there should be some place set up so you can catch up on enough to follow what’s going on. For the moment, that will be posts like this one, where I will attempt to summarize the theory for newbies. And while that’s not so difficult, it is difficult to do it without getting bogged down in minutia. A once-a-month attempt should give me enough examples that I’ll have a good elevator-speech version that can be used in more places. Here goes:

The Strauss & Howe model of history suggests that there is a two-stroke cycle in human history, comprising a ~90-year “Saeculum” composed of four ~22 year “Turnings.” People growing up during a Turning have much in common with those who grew up in previous Turnings of the same type, and the Turnings themselves represent periods in history with high-level similarities. 

The Four Turnings are

• High: The First Turning is the hopeful period after a major historical Crisis. The most recent High was from 1946-1963, where America and the West were ascendant after World War II. 
• Awakening: The Second Turning is time of social and spiritual tumult, a reaction to the safe sameness of the High. The most recent Awakening was from 1964 to 1984, when youth rebelled against just about everything around them.
• Unraveling: The Third Turning is a time of personal freedom and also of uncertainty, as the last shreds of conformity are swept away.. The most recent Unraveling started in 1985, and evidently ended in 2008 - for me, that was all about the Dot-com era, just as earlier Unravelings are known as “The Roaring Twenties” or “The Gold Rush,” even if that hardly covers the period.
• Crisis: The Fourth Turning is when, after years of talking about changing the world, people start to get serious about it. As indicated by the blog title, here, we are currently in a Crisis period. Before this, the Great Depression and World War II comprised the earlier Crisis, from 1929 to 1945.

Reinforcing this cycle, people who have formative experiences during these periods often have similar outlooks and share some personality traits. This causes the appearance of repeating generational archetypes, so that people raised during the Revolutionary War, say, have similarities to those raised during World War II.

The four generational archetypes are

• Prophet (Idealist): Raised during the static High, Prophets want to change the world. 
• Nomad (Reactive): Overwhelmed by the changes of the Awakening, Nomads reject idealistic hopes, growing up cynical and practical.
• Hero (Civic): Raised during the Unraveling, Heroes are young adults during the Crisis, and are later able to take credit for much of the victories wrought there.
• Artist (Adaptive): During the Crisis, children are simultaneously over-protected and under-indulged, as adults focus on the massive tasks at hand. Artists can tend toward the neurotic, and their young experience with uncertain times leaves them interested in stability afterwards.

Not bad, although not enough to explain how the generations and cycles reinforce each other. The concept that the length of the Saeculum and Turnings are related to attributes of human life would only take up more space here.  If it whets your interest, though, you may also want to check The Fourth Turning site, the Generations topic on Wikipedia, or this site that I ran into while looking up Willy Loman. Hope it helps.