Chapter 35 Focus Questions
- Why is the year 1945 chosen by the authors as the beginning of the Cold War with the Soviet Union?
- Explain how American Cold War policy led to continued debate over the power of the Federal government and the proper balance between liberty and order.
- How did the Cold War policy of Containment evolve to be based on collective security and a multilateral economic framework that bolstered noncommunist nations?
- To what extent was U.S. policy successful in containing communism as it faced increasingly complex foreign policy issues including decolonization, shifting international alignments, regional conflicts and global economic and environmental changes.
- Explain the variety of measures that the United States used to contain communist expansion.
- Identify the Yalta Conference. Was it a win or a loss for FDR and the U.S.?
- Look at the amp on pg 822 from the New York Daily news. Is this yellow journalism? Explain.
- Create a T chart with both similarities and differences b/t the Soviet Union and the United States. Now answer the following question: Similarities more than differences led to the Cold War. Support, refute, or modify this statement. Listen to the Beatles’ song Back in the USSR and think/look at the lyrics.
- Read the quote on pg 825 and source the quote.
- Why was Berlin so important and its defense essential?
- How did Truman administration actions hope to correct mistakes made at the end of WWI so that the U.S. would not be facing WWIII?
- Was the Cold War inevitable?
- Why did U.S. containment policy advocate giving more money to the developed world over the developing world? Would this involve tradeoffs for the U.S.? Explain.
- What is the importance of the U.S. both creating and joining the United Nations and NATO?
- Why were American efforts to establish representative democracy successful in Japan but unsuccessful in China?
- Identify NSC-68. What is the importance of NSC-68? How did this document impact Truman’s decision making regarding Korea?
- What is the relationship between big science and gov’t in the 20th century?
- What do you think of Truman’s decision to fire General MacArthur? Considering North Korea today, was Truman’s decision correct?
- Create a T chart noting the similarities and differences b/t the first Red Scare in 1918-1921 and McCarthyism of the late 1940s and early 1950s.
- Compare the witch hunting of the Salem Witch Trials with the witch hunting of the McCarthy era.
- Examine Executive Order 9981. Why did Truman feel pressure to desegregate the military in 1948?
- Why was the Taft-Hartley Act passed and why did labor unions decline in influence after WWII?
- Why did Republicans lose the close election of 1848 and Truman win? What did the election foreshadow?
- Create a T chart or Venn diagram comparing the New Deal with the Fair Deal. Why did Truman not experience the same success as FDR?
- Examine figure 35.2 on page 841. Is the long economic prosperity of 1950-1970 due to military spending/national defense spending? What other factors led to the long economic boom?
- Why did Americans want to move to the Sunbelt?
- Explain the growth of suburbia. Why were suburbanites overwhelmingly white and middle class? Why was the automobile and not public transportation so important? What were the effects on the American way of life, the polarization of society and large U.S. cities?
- How did Levittowns contribute to white flight?
- Read Varying Viewpoints: Who was to blame for the Cold War. Explain the difference between LaFeber’s view and Gaddis’s view. Think of examples that both challenge and support their opinions. Make sure to understand traditional, revisionist and postrevisionist interpretations of events.
Chapter 36 Focus Questions
- As you read the chapter, how many long and short term causes of the intellectual and cultural discontent with American society in the 1950s can you identify?
- Assess the success of the civil rights movement as it used a variety of strategies to combat racial discrimination.
- List and explain the successes and list and explain examples of white resistance to slow desegregation efforts.
- Analyze the ongoing debate over the merits of a large nuclear arsenal and the size of the military-industrial complex.
- Explain how economic and social changes in American society led to an increasingly homogenous mass culture and challenges to conformity by artists, intellectuals, and rebellious youth (beatniks). Answer the following questions after reading The Beat Generation on pages 872-3. The Beat Generation should be called the destroyers of America. Support, refute or modify this statement.
- To what extent did the anxiety engendered by the Cold War contribute to no. 5 above?
- How was the America of 1952-63 different than the two decades that preceded it?
- What accounts for the overwhelming increase in the number of women holding white collar jobs 1900-1960? Where did the men go?
- Contrast the Ford ad on page 853 Examining the Evidence with Betty Friedan’s book The Feminine Mystique.
- Do a brief survey of friends to see how many TVs are in their homes. Yours? Now take a look online and compare that number to 1960, 1980. Now answer the question: The computer and cell phones have now replaced the television as the cultural focal point of American life. Support, refute or modify this statement.
- Identify the Checkers Speech and why it was given.
- Was the Eisenhower victory a victory for the Republican Party in 1952 or a more personal one? Did Ike transcend politics? Why?
- Why did only 20% of African-Americans vote in 1952? Why were pressures mounting for changes to segregation policy?
- Discuss the importance of Brown v. Board of Education, 1954, Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the circumstances surrounding Emmet Till, Eisenhower's decision in the Little Rock Nine and the development of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee.
- What is the importance of the letter from Birmingham Jail?
- Read about the Great African-American migration and create a T chart of similarities and differences comparing life in the North and South.
- Do good fences make good neighbors? Discuss the problem of illegal immigrants to the Sunbelt states in the post World War II era. Look at Living on the Border on youtube by Karl Hoffman-what is his point of view?
- Compare and contrast using a Venn diagram the policy of containment proposed by George Kennan in 1946 and the policy of boldness proposed by John Foster Dulles in the early 1950s.
- Create a T chart comparing the similarities and differences between the causes of American involvement in Korea and the causes of American involvement in Vietnam.
- Analyze the ideological, military and economic concerns that shaped American involvement in the Middle East including crises that sparked attempts to create a national energy policy.
- Watch the CBS news special report with Douglas Edwards on the launching of Sputnik on you tube to better understand the tensions during the Cold War that surrounded the event.
- Identify the primary aim of U.S. foreign policy toward Latin American nations during this time period and show how this might create resentment. Would past U.S. policy generate resentment as well? Explain.
- Create a list of examples of anti-Catholic bias in U.S. History so far that would put Kennedy's faith in context as a political issue.
- 1960 featured the first presidential debate. Watch a clip of the debate on youtube and discuss how you would have voted and why.
- Compare the map 36.2 to the map 36.1 and explain the changes.
- To what extent did the Apollo Mission and the Peace Corps change the image of the United States around the world?
- Compare and contrast Dulles' policy of massive retaliation with Kennedy's policy of flexible response.
- Create a chart with two crises: The Bay of Pigs and direct involvement of the U.S. in Vietnam. Put the causes of each in one column and the reasons for U.S. involvement in the other. Watch the trailer for 13 Days on youtube about the Cuban Missile Crisis
30. Compare and contrast Ernest Hemingway with Theodore Roosevelt.
31. Explain how civil rights activists utilized a variety of strategies to combat racial discrimination. Why did they work? What was the reaction of the Federal gov't over time? Why? Make sure to include the March on Washington and its significance.
Chapter 37 Focus Questions
1. Identify the "Johnson Treatment" and relate it to the use of the bully pulpit of the presidency.
2. Why did LBJ think he could be the architect of the Great Society?
3. Identify the pieces of legislation that would constitute the Great Society.
4. How does the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the rise of the anti-war movement and counterculture fit into the larger story of U.S. development?
5. Which decade, the 1850s or 1890s, best compares to the stormy 1960s? Why?
6. Explain growing U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War and the subsequent development of the anti-war movement.
7. Relate anti-communism abroad with liberalism and the firm belief in the efficacy of federal gov't power to achieve social goals at home.
8. Explain how civil rights activists and political leaders achieved some legal and political successes in ending segregation.
9. Link the successes in eight to growing movements of identity, social justice, gender/sexuality and ethnicity movements and their impacts on 1960s society.
10. Explain why the election of 1964 saw further splitting of the New Deal coalition of FDR.
11. Create a T chart summarizing the important points of LBJ's Great Society. On the left side indicate programs funded and created and legislation passed, and on the right side explain what the legislation did and what the impacts of the programs were. Include the Appalachia project, new cabinet offices, the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities as well.
12. Are LBJ's measures just an extension of the New Deal? Explain.
13. Link these measures to the rise of a growing conservative movement in the country. What did this conservative movement want to accomplish? How did this movement impact the New Deal coalition?
14. What was the impact of the Voting Rights Act on southern politics?
15. Discuss the differing versions of Black Freedom in the contending voices passages. Why did King see nonviolence as key to achieving the movements goals? What would explain African American growing receptiveness to militant appeals in the 1960s? Watch clip from the film Malcolm X-particularly the introductory speech on you tube.
16. Create a timeline of the civil rights movement in the 1960s and then create an argument as to why the movement splinters.
17. Analyze the role played by the news media in the Vietnam conflict.
18. Compare the song An Okie from Muskogee by Merle Haggard to Fortunate Son by CCR and relate to the growing concerns over the Vietnam War. (youtube)
19. Create a T chart listing the domestic and foreign factors that caused the Vietnam War to be so unpopular in the U.S. Relate these to the election of Richard Nixon in 1968. Why did he win ? How did he win? What was the impact on the New Deal coalition?
20. Hawks vs. Doves-debate whether or not the United States should have been involved in the Vietnam War using an understanding of U.S. Cold War policies of containment to back your reasoning.
21. What are the three most important changes that occurred in American society as a result of 1960s unrest.
22. Analyze the Beatles' song Revolution. Listen on youtube. What is the point of view of the song? Explain.
23. Link youth protests in the U.S. to youth protests elsewhere in the 1960s. What is the impact of the range and geographical extent of these?
24. Identify the Stonewall Rebellion at Stonewall Inn in 1969 and link to the growing movements for social justice.
25. Explain and discuss the impact the policy of Vietnamization and the Nixon Doctrine.
26. Look back at map 36.3 and locate the following: DienBienPhu, Gulf of Tonkin, Hanoi, Haiphong, Da Nang, My Lai, Saigon, the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the Mekong Delta, Phnom Penh and also note enemy supply routes and the locations of major U.S. bases.
27. Why were the MY Lai massacre and Kent State so disheartening? Which one was more responsible for turning the public against the war? Explain.
28. Listen to the song by CSN and Y "Ohio" on youtube and then create a T chart comparing the similarities and differences b/t the Boston Massacre and Kent State. Which one had a greater impact on subsequent events? Wy?
29. Analyze the impact of Nixon's visit to China. Who had more to gain? Why?
30. Make a three column chart of famous Supreme Court cases in the 1950s and 1960s. Case Year, Supreme Court Decision, Objections to the decision.
31. Identify affirmative action, the Philadelphia Plan of Nixon and trace the development of the policy form JFK-Nixon. Why would this policy be controversial?
32. Identify the EPA, OSHA, the CPSC, earth day. Answer the following : During the Nixon administration, the federal government gained too much influence over private business operations in its attempt to preserve the environment. Support, refute, or modify this statement.
33. Discuss whether or not the election of 1972 represented the last election of the 1960s era or the first election of a new era.
34. Create a linear timeline chronicling the balance of power b/t the president and Congress since the Civil War. On the y axis put years in decades and on the x axis put a 100 point scale.
35. Identify and explain the importance of the bombing of Cambodia and the War Powers Act.
36. Identify and explain the importance of the Arab Oil Embargo and the Energy crisis. Use the cartoon on page 907 to help.
37. Read Varying Viewpoints: The Sixties: Constructive or Destructive? on pg 908. Analyze and explain the various points of view presented by historians and attempt to answer the question.
38. Was the growth of the conservative movement in the 1970s and 1980s a backlash due to the liberal policies and tumultuous events of the 1960s? Explain.
Chapter 38 Focus Questions
1. Even though the Civil Rights movement fractured, chronicle the continuities and changes in race relations in the U.S. in the 1960s and 1970s.
2. Compare and contrast the first wave of the feminist movement of the 1840s-1920 with the second wave of the feminist movement from 1920s-1970s.
3. Read Contending Voices on pg 929 and relate the excerpts to the liberal and conservative clashes about the power of the federal gov't in the 1970s.
4. Explain how the nuclear family would change as the number of working women increased and social attitudes changed.
5. Look at number 38 in chap 37 above.
6. Explain how conservatives and liberals clashed over many new social issues, the power of the presidency, and the federal govt and the movements for greater individual rights.
7. Explain the impact young people would have in greater informality in U.S. culture.
8. Identify Watergate, link it to other dirty tricks by Nixon and link it to the resignation of Nixon's V.P. and the appointment of Gerald Ford as the new V.P.
9. Look at the two cartoons on pg 912 and answer the following. Why is Nixon being mocked as a law and order man? What is Nixon covering up? why is there a tool box, tape recorder and microphone on the floor? What does a smoking gun mean? Why is Nixon dressed in black?
10. Read Examining the Evidence and create a T chart listing the pros and cons of having tape White House discussions as part of the public record.
11. Even though double income households were on the rise in the 1970s, why did real median income not rise?
12.Identify stagflation and its causes in the 1970s. Identify inflation and its causes in the 1970s.
13. Create a T chart on the advantages and disadvantages of globalization. Read Thinking Globally on pg s 916-17 to help.
14. Take the three presidents of the 1970s, Nixon, Ford, and Carter and unveil the president's point of view regarding stagflation, discord, and disillusionment in the 1970s. Address the social issues of the 1970s, the power of the presidency and federal gov't, changes in the family structure, and movements for greater individual rights by different groups.
15. Identify the Equal Rights Amendment and explain why it was eventually defeated. Incorporate the case of Roe vs. Wade into this answer.
16. Reader Makers of America: The Vietnamese on pages 920-21. Compare their treatment to the treatment of Japanese Americans during WWII. Compare the reasons for their coming to reasons of previous immigrants during the new immigration of 1880-1920.
17. Discuss the impact of Milliken vs Bradley on those who favored integration of schools. Identify reverse discrimination and white flight associated with this case. Link this to the case of California vs Bakke and affirmative action.
18. Why did James Earl Carter win the 1976 election?
19. How did Carter's christian emphasis on human rights impact U.S. foreign policy? Explain.
20. Explain the economic and energy woes of the late 1970s. How did Carter respond to these challenges?
21. Identify and explain the Iranian hostage crisis.
22. Identify and explain MADD, mutual deterrence, detente, SALT I and SALT II. Link these to the nuclear arms race and the growing nuclear freeze movement.
Chapter 39 Focus Questions
1. Identify as many long and short term causes for the end of the Cold War as you can as you read the chapter.
2. Construct the historical context for the resurgence of conservatism and the rise of the New Right.
3. Read Varying Viewpoints on pg 954 and assess which interpretation of the origins of modern conservatism do you find most persuasive? Why?
4. Explain how conservatism was fueled by the reduced faith in gov'ts ability to solve social and economic problems, the growth of religious fundamentalism and social conservatism, and the dissemination of neoconservative thought, largely through AM radio talk shows.
5. Did conservatism gain any significant victories? Explain why or why not.
6. Compare Carter and Reagan. What are their similarities?
7. Why did Reagan view gov't as the problem and not the solution? Why did Reagan think supply side economics would reduce the deficit? Why did it not do so?
8. Identify SDI and the Reagan adm. strategy to win the Cold War. Relate that goal to the previous question.
9. Identify the Sandinistas and the Contras and explain why the U.S. was involved in Central America. Should the U.S. have been that involved? Explain.
10. Identify perestroika, Glasnost, the INF treaty and link to number 8 above.
11. Identify the Iran-Contra affair and juxtapose it with the picture of Gorbachev and Reagan shaking hands on pg 941. Why is the Iran-Contra affair so detrimental to the end of the Reagan presidency?
12. To what degree was Reagan conservatism able to dismantle the New Deal?
13. How should the United States handle its growing national debt in the 1980s? Now?
14. In the 1980s is the rich/poor gap widening? What other factors should be considered?
15. What is the Moral Majority and how did the Supreme Ct. reflect growing conservatism in the 1980s. Make sure to include and explain Cove Packing vs. Antonia and Webster vs. Reproductive Health Services.
16. Discuss the effects of Reagan's presidency on both domestic and foreign policy. Should Reagan make a list of the top ten presidents? Explain.
17. Create a T chart showing all the reasons that the Democrats thought they would win the presidential election of 1988 on one side and reasons against the Democrats winning on the other. Compare 1988 to the 1948 election.
18. Identify Tiananmen Square. Look at the picture on pg 947. If you are an anti-communist American, what is your reaction? Pro-communist Cuban?
19. Explain how a reinvigorated anti-Communist foreign policy followed by the establishment of a friendly relationship with Gorbachev led to significant arms reductions and an end to the Cold War.
20. With a group of three world maps, indicate the areas of the world in which the U.S. was involved in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Did the areas change significantly? Explain.
21. Who should get the largest share of credit for ending the Cold War? Why?
22. List and explain the causes and effects of operation Desert Storm. Who did it involve? What happened? Look at the picture on pg 952. What is your reaction as an American? Islamic fundamentalist?
23. Identify the Americans with Disabilities Act and discuss its impacts.
24. What three factors damaged the reputation of George H. W. Bush and even though he presided over a victorious liberation of Kuwait, lost the election of 1992.
25. Do you consider yourself to be living as a free individual under minimal government in largely autonomous communities? Justify your answer.