book essay

Instructions For this assignment, I want you to learn about some policies and trends in recent American history that we won’t get to cover in depth in class.

At the beginning of each chapter of Eric Foner’s, Give Me Liberty, (Vol. 2), there are a series of Focus Questions; at the end are a series of Review Questions—I’ve selected and/or paraphrased a few of each. Read the appropriate sections of the following chapters and answer all of the following questions:

Ch.23, The United States and the Cold War (1945-1953)

• What major ideological conflicts, security interests, and events brought about the Cold War? (Origins of the Cold War)
• Explain the meaning and causes of the “American Standard of Living” during the 1950s. Describe how the automobile transformed American communities and culture in the 1950s. (The Golden Age)
• Following the Civil Rights Movement for African Americans, what new movements for social change happened in the 1960s? What role did the Supreme Court play in the Rights Revolution? (The New Movements and the Rights Revolution)
• What were the chief domestic policies and foreign policies of Ronald Reagan’s presidency? (The Reagan Revolution)
• What cultural conflicts emerged in the 1990s? (Culture Wars)

Ch. 24, An Affluent Society (1953-1960)

Ch. 25, The Sixties (1960-1968)

Ch. 26, The Triumph of Conservatism (1969-1988)

Ch.27, Globalization and its Discontents (1989-2000)

Further Instructions

• Use question-answer format—write out the question, then write a short essay answering it. Do that for each question.
• Use quotes and page citations for each chapter (in parentheses at the end of the sentence). Essays that don’t will be graded down.
• Your essay must be a 15-page minimum (of actual essay, about 24 lines per page).
• Your answers must come from the Foner book, don’t use outside sources.