Question 1

How were Latin American socialists and communists like Fidel Castro able to charge the United States with hypocrisy in its conduct of foreign policy in the region? Was there some level of legitimacy to the charge of hypocrisy in the conduct of foreign policy toward Latin America by the Eisenhower and Kennedy administration? If so, what specific examples support your view? If not, why not?

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Question 2

Do you think that President Kennedy promised more as a candidate than he delivered as president? Focus on his domestic reform proposals and be specific. What did he promise, and what did he accomplish?

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Question 3

Assess the diplomatic and military policies ofPresident Eisenhower's Secretary of StateJohn Foster Dulles. Do you think that they were realistic? Why or why not?

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Question 4

Why was Eisenhower generally successful in avoiding American involvement in any large-scale foreign wars?

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Question 5

Do you think that you would have liked "Ike" in the 1950s? Why or why not? Which of his personal qualities, domestic programs, and foreign-policy decisions do you find most admirable? For what may he be criticized? Why?

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Question 6

What accounts for the public's fascination with John F. Kennedy both while he was president and since his assassination? Do you think that the Kennedy presidency has become more myth than reality in our collective memory? Why or why not?

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Question 7

Describe the literary flowering of post-World War II America. How did that culture reflect new voices of African Americans, southerners, and Jews?

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Question 8

How might a play like Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman be said to reflect the questions that many social critics were asking about mass American culture in the 1950s?

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Question 9

Why were the Peace Corps and the promise to "land a man on the moon by the end of this decade" both identified as key initiatives of the Kennedy administration? Were these two efforts more symbol than substance, or did they reflect important efforts to "get America moving again," as Kennedy had promised?

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Question 10

What political, economic, and social factors explain the rise, resilience, and dedicated activism of the American civil rights movement in the 1950s?

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Question 11

Eisenhower said he based his domestic policies on the principles of dynamic conservatism. Is this a fair label? What was conservative about his policies? What was dynamic? In what areas, if any, did he depart from this philosophy?

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Question 12

Compare and contrast Truman's and Eisenhower's foreign policies. What was new about the new look? What illustrates the basic continuity of the containment doctrine?

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Question 13

In what ways did the Eisenhower administration contribute to the developing American involvement in Vietnam? How did President Kennedy intensify and deepen the American involvement in Vietnam? Why were these decisions made? What were the possible policy alternatives to these decisions about Vietnam?

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Question 14

Critically evaluate President Eisenhower's response to the fall of Dienbienphu, the Hungarian revolt, the Suez Crisis, and Castro's revolution in Cuba.

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Question 15

How did the Beat Generation represent a stark example of dissent and rebellion amid the literary culture of the 1950s? What was its long-term impact on the cultural tastes and development of the post-World War II "baby boom" generation?

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Question 16

How did Europeans' increasingly critical views of American race relations affect attitudes toward the civil rights movement during the later 1950s? Were critics like Gunnar Myrdal essentially right that Americans would have to choose between their ideals of democracy and their practice of racism?

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Question 17

Were Senator Joseph McCarthy's unsubstantiated and ruinous allegations of communist sympathies and activities against liberals, former and current government officials in the State Department and other government bureaucracies, and even members of the U.S. Army a reflection of his personal character or a manifestation of the larger American fears and anxieties about communism and social change in the late 1940s and early 1950s?

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Question 18

Describe President Eisenhower's response to the civil rights movement, to the social-welfare programs of the New Deal, and to federal government spending to promote economic growth, jobs, and education.

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Question 19

Was Kennedy's confrontation with Khrushchev in the Cuban missile crisis a brilliant demonstration of firmness without aggressiveness or a dangerous strategy that could easily have resulted in nuclear war?

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Question 20

In retrospect, the election of John Kennedy in 1960 is seen as bringing an end to the political consensus and caution of the 1950s. Could this have been predicted from the campaign of 1960? Should Kennedy be seen as a liberal critic of Eisenhower and Nixon, or in some ways a conservative one?

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Quiz 15: American Zenith 1952-1963