The essays we'll use offer students a chance to reflect on two key developments of World War
II; the internment of the Japanese
Americans into concentration camps, and the decision of President Truman to use
the atomic bomb against Japan. Truman’s
decision to use the bomb ended the Second World War but ushered in the new age
of Cold War diplomacy and nuclear strategy.
The sections in this reader on the Cold War will engage students to
think critically about the problem and expansion of the National Security State
and the rise of the NSC or National Security Council. Another section allows students to read and
consider the consequences and reasons for the CIA’s direct intervention and
arrangement of coups in Honduras and Iran in the 1950s. Students may consider how does this policy
decision continue to affect our relations with Iran today. The Cold War may be
analyzed as a war for the Third World between Russia and the Communist Bloc and
the West. Finally the section in the
reader on the Kennedy assassination may be read as a conclusion of a phase of
the Cold War and the age of suspicion. Peter Dale Scott’s Deep Politics and the Death of JFK (1992) is a useful work for
asking questions about the deeper politics of mafias and secrecy that abounded
in the Kennedy White House.
The domestic counter to the
Cold War is the Civil Rights movement that grew all through the 1950s and
1960s. The section in the reader
“Nonviolence and the Civil Rights Movement,” may also be compared with the
section “The Feminine Mystique and the Organization Man,” to compare the
transformation of domestic life and the emergence of women’s rights and civil
rights.
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