It is unfortunate that many students of traditional college age are now entering our institutions of higher learning with virtually no understanding of the Vietnam War. It is not much talked about publicly. Its coverage in high-school history courses frequently takes place near the end of the semester. But the impact of the war will live on. Students need to understand it. What was the war about? How and why did it begin? What was the nature of the fighting itself? What were the effects of the war on Vietnam, the United States, Cambodia, Laos, the rest of the world? What reception was accorded returning servicemen who fought in America's most unpopular war? See George C. Herring, America's Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950-1975 (third edition; 1996); George Donelson Moss, Vietnam: An American Ordeal (third edition; 1998); and Robert D. Schulzinger, A Time for War: The United States and Vietnam, 1941-1975 (1997). For journalistic and photographic material that may be helpful, see Michael Charlton and Anthony Moncrieff, Many Reasons Why: The American Involvement in Vietnam (1989); Bob Greene, Homecoming: When the Soldiers Returned from Vietnam (1989); and Dick Durrance, Where War Lives; A Photographic Journal of Vietnam (1988).

Political radicalism in the 1960s deserves a closer look. The Old Left and the New Left not only did not always agree but were sometimes adversaries. Who were they? How were they organized? To what extent were their goals achieved? In addition to the citations in the chapter bibliography, consult Winifred Breines, "Whose New Left?" Journal of American History 75 (September 1988): 528-545, for a review of Maurice Isserman, If I Had a Hammer: The Death of the Old Left and the Birth of the New Left (1987); Todd Gitlin, The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage (1987); George Katsiaficas, The Imagination of the New Left: A Global Analysis of 1968 (1987); and others.

The counterculture of the 1960s is a source of fascination to young adults of the present day. There is more than a small element of envy in their view of the apparently free spirits of the 1960s who dropped acid, made love, and seemed to live a life of gaiety and abandon. A lecture will touch on those themes but will also emphasize the personal and social costs of such lifestyles and perhaps consider what happened to the participants when the Age of Aquarius ended. Morris Dickstein, Gates of Eden: American Culture in the Sixties (1977), is an excellent source. Many of the citations in the chapter bibliography offer the perspective of involvement and approval (for example, Theodore Roszak, The Making of a Counterculture [1969]) or of distance and second thoughts. See, for example, Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1979).

The text calls Richard M. Nixon a classic outsider., "a man of great talents and even greater flaws." The description is most apt, and a biographical lecture dealing with this complicated personality will be of lasting benefit. In later years, long after his departure from office, Nixon began taking on a kind of elder-statesman role, especially with regard to foreign affairs. The eulogies at his death suggest at least a partial recovery of honor, and the American public may yet decide that his accomplishments outweigh his sins. See Garry Wills, Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-Made Man (1970); the three volumes on Nixon by Stephen E. Ambrose, subtitled The Education of a Politician, 1913-1962 (1988); The Triumph of a Politician, 1962-1972 (1989), and Ruin and Recovery, 1973-1990 (1991); Tom Wicker, One of Us: Richard Nixon and the American Dream (1991); Joan Hoff, Nixon Reconsidered (1994); and with particular alertness to speculative excess, Fawn M. Brodie, Richard Nixon: The Shaping of His Character (1981). See also William Bundy, A Tangled Web: The Making of Foreign Policy in the Nixon Presidency (1998).

The election of 1968 was perhaps one of the nation's most unusual. It was a year of assassinations and riots, a president dejected and depressed, a clash between the dovish liberalism of Eugene McCarthy and the hawkish liberalism of Hubert Humphrey on the one hand and the two types of conservatism of Richard Nixon and George Wallace on the other. Analysis of the election can be interesting and exciting. See Charles Kaiser, 1968 in America: Music, Politics, Chaos, Counterculture, and the Shaping of a Generation (1988); David Caute, The Year of the Barricades: A Journey Through 1968 (1988); David Farber, Chicago '68 (1988); and titles in "The Politics of 1968" section of the chapter bibliography.