World historian Peter Turchin says we are in a revolutionary situation in America. According to Turchin The United States has gone through two periods of prosperity (integration) and two periods of disintegration.

The two cycles of prosperity went from 1760 to 1830 and between 1900 to 1960 and saw wages double and people actually grow in height! During the two periods of decline (1830 to 1900 and 1960 to today), wages were lower and people actually shrank in size. Turchin says we are going through a period today akin to the 1850s before the Civil War.

This class should help you make sense not only of what is going on in the United States today, but in the whole world. It grounds our situation today in the world cycles of the rise of fall of civilizations.

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*Required reading: End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites and the Path of Political Disintegration Turchin, Peter (2023)

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About the Instructor

Bruce has been a night-school college teacher for 27 years. He has taught in alternative college settings, in prisons, and the military, and written eight books—including three on the application of Russian Lev Vygotsky’s work on world history.

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