According to the authors of “Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future of American Politics,” change is indeed on its way, and the magnitude of that change will be monumental — a tectonic realignment of the sort that occurs about every four decades, leading to a fundamental shift in policy priorities and voter coalitions.

Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais also write in this fascinating but not always persuasive volume that the party capturing the White House in 2008 has “a historic opportunity to become the majority party for at least four more decades,” and that the rising generation of Millennials (born between 1982 and 2003) will imprint the coming national discourse with its own temperament and predilections, washing away “the current politics of polarization and ideological deadlock” and putting in its place “a new landscape of collective purpose and national consensus that involves individuals and communities in solving the nation’s problems.”

Mr. Winograd, a former adviser to Al Gore and the co-author of an earlier book called “Taking Control: Politics in the Information Age” (which was reportedly widely read in the Clinton White House), and Mr. Hais, a communications researcher, have relied heavily in this volume on the work of William Strauss and Neil Howe, who in books like “Generations” (1991) and “Millennials Rising” (2000) have articulated a theory of generational change and who are acknowledged in these pages as key inspirations. Much of the methodology and terminology used here comes directly from the writings of Mr. Strauss and Mr. Howe, as do many of the qualities ascribed to specific generations like the Baby Boomers and the Millennials.