This is one of a four-volume series intended to improve students' (grade 6-adult) critical thinking through evaluation of conflicting viewpoints of United States history. Each lesson is a self-contained problem that can be integrated at any point in a corresponding history unit. The book represents both analytical and narrative history. Unit One…

Described is a Yalta simulation and other units in a course designed to have high school students think through, from the perspective of participants and historians, important decisions made by Americans during the past 39 years. The course will prepare students to make intelligent decisions about political and social questions. (RM)

This unit focuses on the decades of the 1940s and 1950s by studying key events from the eras. Students analyze issues and think critically about decisions made during the time. Topics of the unit include: (1) "Japanese Relocation"; (2) "Rationing: Who Should Get What?"; (3) "War in the Pacific"; (4) "The Draft: Who Should Fight a War?"; (5)…

By focusing on the question of whether it was right or wrong to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, this social studies unit seeks to illuminate the political, military, scientific, and moral complexities involved in making far-reaching decisions today. Sections of the unit use primary materials from American, Japanese, and English sources to…

Provides an insightful look at the administrative and negotiative processes that accompanied the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. Although John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev both worked to avoid nuclear war, the stress and exhaustion of the negotiating process created serious blunders. Eventually both sides backed away from nuclear annihilation. (MJP)