(cross posted from Dailykos)
William Straus and Neil Howe broke social science ground in 1991 with the fist in a series of books studying American generational history, this book "Generations", traces America's generational history back to 1584 and establishes their theory that US history can be fairly accurately framed as a roughly 80 year repeating cycle of 4 distinct generational groups.

The theory postulates that each generation has certain characteristics which distinguishes itself from the other generations in it's cycle. Among those distinctions are social attitudes, behaviors, and politics.

This theory has recently been advanced even further by the Morley Wiongrad and Michael D. Hais book "Millennial Makeover" which focuses on the millennial generation sometimes referred to as Generation Y.

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