Historians of American foreign relations are continuing to expand the ways in which they approach the Cold War. The range of perspectives has evolved thanks to the influence of emerging fields and new emphases in history. The end of the Cold War revealed the many ways in which the conflict was a protracted global war. But it also brought a renewed…

On May 1, 2011, a group of U.S. soldiers boarded helicopters at a base in Afghanistan, hoping to find a man named Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden, the leader of the al Qaeda terrorist network, was responsible for a number of terrorist attacks around the world, including those of September 11, 2001, that killed nearly 3,000 people in the United States.…

Unrealistic as they may have been, television shows like Leave it to Beaver and Ozzie and Harriet served important social purposes during an age of tumult and anxiety. The domestic sit-coms of the 1950s played an educative function by reinforcing and disseminating traditional values at a time when forces of change were becoming quite disruptive.…

In December 1984 when the Soviet Union still was an "evil empire" and the United States "encroached on the achievements of Socialism," Ira Jay Winn wrote, "students who scream "Kill the Russkies" or who believe that the Soviets fought against us in World War II... are not simply ignorant of historical facts or…

This paper describes a pedagogical technique employed for an interdisciplinary course on Cold War America. Students had to "become" a fictional person and discuss how political and social changes during the Cold War era would have impacted that person. By doing a semester-long project that required primary source research, this…

Suitable for use with high school students, this booklet on arms control and national security provides background information, describes basic concepts, reviews recent history, and offers suggestions for further reading. The first section, on American attitudes toward national security and arms control, defines five types of limits on weapons…

Forty years ago, George F. Kennan advanced the doctrine of containment against Soviet encroachment throughout the world. The Soviet Union has evolved from a Eurasian land power into a global superpower. In an effort to create an international environment congenial to domestic reforms, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has sought greater tranquility…