The remarkable (if not "miraculous") postwar economic boom, and its impact on government spending, capital, and labor
The explosion of scientific and technological breakthroughs in the decades after World War I, particularly in the realms of medical research, computer electronics, military technology, and space exploration
The contours of the technological, consumer-oriented, and remarkably affluent society of the 1950s, and its shadow, consisting of a less privileged underclass and the existence of a small corps of aesthetic detractors
The origins of the civil-rights revolution for African Americans, beginning with the Supreme Court's social desegregation decision of 1954
The business-oriented "dynamic conservatism" of President Dwight Eisenhower, which resisted most new reforms without significantly rolling back the activist government programs born in the 1930s
The foreign policy of Dwight Eisenhower, which continued to allow containment by building alliances, supporting anticommunist regimes, maintaining the arms race, and conducting limited interventions, but also showed an awareness of American limitations and resisted temptations for greater commitments
A thorough study of Chapter Twenty-eight should enable the student to understand the following:
The surprising strength of the economy in the 1950s and early 1960s
The explosion of science and technology in the postwar world, especially in the fields of medicine, chemistry, electronics, rocketry, and space exploration
The effects of affluence on the American lifestyle in the 1950s, including the rapid growth of suburbs, televisions, and rock 'n' roll
The aesthetic and social backlash against the affluent society, as manifested in the writings of the Beat and the rise of juvenile delinquency
The plight of the "Other America," left out of the economic affluence of the period
The significance of the Supreme Court's desegregation decision and the rise of the early civil rights movement
The characteristics of Dwight Eisenhower's middle-of-the-road domestic policy
The new elements of American foreign policy introduced by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles
The origins and significance of increasing United States involvement in the Middle East and Latin America
The reasons for new tensions with the Soviet Union toward the end of the Eisenhower administration
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