Final Exam Questions

History 1302 Final Exam Spring 2013 On the day of the final, the students will be told which two prompts they will be required to respond to in blue books that the students have provided to the instructor. Essays should show a great deal of thought and range between “short answers” and formal essays, leaning closer to the idea of an essay. The student may have one page of handwritten notes on a standard size sheet of paper (8½ X 11). Bring this sheet with you to the final. 1) The events at the 1968 Democratic national Convention in Chicago suggested to many that the nation was disintegrating. But, as the authors of the textbook have noted, the tensions that seemed so palpable that summer had been long in developing and had “revealed deep cracks” in the postwar liberal consensus. How real was the postwar consensus? What caused such a seismic breakdown in social harmony? In other words, why did the optimism and idealism that had characterized the 1950s and early 1960s give way to disillusionment and polarization? 2) Tracing the development of the “modern Era” of the United States, what were the four most compelling events that shaped the move to contemporary America? How did these four events that you choose, shape modern America? 3) What geopolitical forces drew the United States into World War II? Was it different from the issues that drove us into World War I? How did the American attitude toward the world change as a result of the war? 4) Progressive reformers called upon the American government to be an active partner in reforming American Society. In what ways was Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” and FDR’s “New Deal” a continuation of the progressive thrust? In what ways are they substantially different? 5) In a 1969 address, Vice President Spiro T. Agnew discussed the “importance of the television news medium to the American people.” He noted that “it must be recognized that the networks have made important contributions to the national knowledge- for news,