Historical Dictionary of the Kennedy-johnson Era

by Burns, Richard Dean; Siracusa, Joseph M.

• ISBN13: 9780810858428
• ISBN10: 0810858428
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-09-19
• Publisher: Scarecrow Press

Summary

In the history of the United States, few periods could more justly be regarded as the best and worst of times than the Kennedy-Johnson era. The arrival of John F. Kennedy in the White House in 1961 unleashed an unprecedented wave of hope and optimism in a large segment of the population; a wave that would come crashing down when he was assassinated only a few years later. His successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, enjoyed less popularity, but he was one of the most experienced and skilled presidents the country had ever seen, and he promised a Great Society to rival Kennedy's New Frontier. Both presidents were dogged by foreign policy disasters: Kennedy by the Bay of Pigs fiasco, although he came out ahead on the Cuban missile crisis, and Johnson from the backlash of the Vietnam War. The 1960s witnessed unprecedented progress toward racial and sexual equality, but it also played host to race and urban riots. And while impressive advances in the sciences and arts were fueling the American imagination, the counterculture rejected it all. The A to Z of the Kennedy-Johnson Era relates these events and provides extensive political, economic, and social background on this era through a detailed chronology, an introduction, appendixes, a bibliography, and several hundred cross-referenced dictionary entries on important persons, events, institutions, policies, and issues.

Author Biography

Joseph M. Siracusa is professor in the School of Global Studies, Social Science, and Planning at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia, where he is a specialist in nuclear politics and global security.

Table of Contents

Editor's Foreword	p. vii
Chronology	p. ix
Introduction	p. 1
The Dictionary	p. 35
Lists of Officials, Elections, Congresses	p. 311
Constitutional Amendments	p. 315
John F. Kennedy's Addresses	p. 319
Lyndon B. Johnson's Addresses	p. 341
Martin Luther King, Jr. Speech	p. 349
Selected Bibliography	p. 353
About the Authors	p. 395
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