1970s - Present U.S. Newsletter

Use this 14-page newsletter as a quick way to present students with post-Vietnam Era through the post-Cold War Era challenges and accomplishments of the U.S.

This newsletter begins with inflation and Nixon's economy, his Vietnamization of the war, his "law and order" candidacy, the Watergate Scandal, and President Ford's pardon of Nixon.

It also includes the War Powers Act, the Helsinki Accords, the Camp David Accords, the oil crisis of the seventies and OPEC, Carter's "malaise" speech, the Iranian storming of the embassy and the hostage crisis, the Soviet Union and Afghanistan, Ronald Reagan and the "New Right," the culture wars, supply-side economics, the Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars), Mikhail Gorbachev and the fall of the Berlin Wall, glasnost and perestroika, the INF Treaty, the Iran-Contra Scandal, and Reagan's legacy.

This newsletter continues on with the democratic forces that accompanied the end of the Cold War. It includes Tiananmen Square, and George Bush's "new world order," Saddam Hussein and Operation Desert Storm, the "gender gap," "Read my lips - no new taxes," Ross Perot, Bill Clinton as a "new Democrat." "Don't ask, don't tell," the Brady Bill and the Million Mom March, Somalia, the Balkans, Whitewater, Monica Lewinsky, Clinton's impeachment, NAFTA, George W. Bush and the "hanging chads," Osama Bin Laden and 9-11, Al Qaeda and the Taliban, the Patriot Act, the "axis of evil," Colin Powell, and WMD's.

The newsletter ends with a look at the new century, from dot-com companies and the new family, to the immigration debate and race relations in the U.S.