History
The history of LifeCourse stretches back twenty years. In the late 1980s, William Strauss and Neil Howe—two professionals with graduate degrees in history, economics, and law and with previous books on public policy—began research on a new book that would tell the collective biographies of American generations. The result, Generations, was published in 1991. Soon after, the authors began receiving inquiries from managers and leaders about how to solve strategic problems in their organizations.
The volume of these inquiries steadily increased over time. The word was spread not only through client recommendations, but also through further Howe and Strauss best-sellers, including 13th-Gen (1993), The Fourth Turning (1997), Millennials Rising (2000). Numerous essays in national newspapers and magazines followed, from USA Today to a cover story in the Atlantic Monthly. Among our more recent releases are a series of generational applications books, such as Millennials Go To College, Millennials and the Pop Culture, and forthcoming publications on the workforce and marketing.
In 1999, LifeCourse Associates was established as a legal partnership in Fairfax County, Virginia, an exurb of Washington, DC. Though we are a “virtual” company and contract with many distant associates and allies, a few key persons have been instrumental to our success. LifeCourse Marketing Director Rick Delano, based in Long Island, New York, is a social marketing and educational practices consultant who has a sixth sense for figuring out just what our clients need. Our outstanding LifeCourse Associates team—including Victoria Hays, Reena Nadler, and Jack Congdon (in Virginia) and Craig Cheslog (in California)—makes sure we serve our clients’ needs in a timely fashion.
In addition to this website, LifeCourse hosts a discussion forum on generations and history for our readers, which has been running continuously since 1996. For the benefit of scholars and journalists, we also maintain an on-line database on American leaders by generation for all 200-plus years of U.S. history. In 2006, LifeCourse Associates established a partnership with Crux Research, a market research firm. This alliance will help LifeCourse pursue its strategic goal of forging long-term relationships with key clients in various sectors across the economy.
When we published Generations in 1991, almost no one in the marketplace was thinking in generational terms. Now, nearly everyone does. We welcome this, because knowing our collective “location in history” is useful not just for identifying our near-term priorities as individual persons and organizations, but also for fostering the best long-term outcome for our nation and world.
