The voice of the modern civil rights movement and its most determined eloquent leader is Martin Luther King junior. ibid.
The Manhattan Project: Robert Oppenheimer leads the team that develops the atomic bomb. The original weapon of mass destruction. ibid.
It’s the Cold War and Americans are on red alert. Both sides stockpile weapons to defend themselves against possible attack. ibid.
America is at the height of its power. Innovation and invention are about to define a new era of prosperity and technological wonder. One invention will change the world, along with the biggest communications revolution ever seen. America: The Story of the US: Millennium
By 1970 there are over 16 million: TV will play a defining role in shaping a new era. ibid.
Vietnam: A bitter conflict in South East Asia [sic]. America fears communism will sweep the region and wants to stop its influence. The US and all its technology comes up against a determined guerrilla movement. The war is being fought by hundreds of thousands of drafted young Americans. ibid.
June 1969, Up-state New York: Woodstock. A weekend concert for over 100,000 ticket holders is overrun by nearly half a million baby-boomers. Over a million more try to get in. It’s the world’s biggest ever music festival. ibid.
Nixon: The only president ever to resign the office. His speech watched live by 85% of all American households. ibid.
The credit card is the symbol of the decade. ibid.
The shuttle is symbolic of the American story. ibid.
The shuttle is seen as an easy safe route to the final frontier. But on January 28th 1986, just 73 seconds after take off, Challenger explodes live on national television. ibid.
A new frontier: Cyberspace ... At first computers don’t seem like a revolution. ibid.
By September 1975 Gerald Ford had been president for just over a year. That month there were two attempts to assassinate him. ibid.
For the modern president image is everything. ibid.
Harry Truman entered the presidency with the highest approval rating of all modern presidents. But it didn’t last. ibid.
Clinton ended his two-term presidency with the highest approval rating of any outgoing president. Ronald Reagan came second. ibid.
Two-term presidents are amongst the only US-born citizens that can’t be elected or rather re-elected president. ibid.
Bill Clinton has raked in more than $60 million in speeches alone since leaving office. ibid.
Do you never stop to reflect just what it is that America stands for? If she stands for one thing more than another, it is for the sovereignty of self-governing peoples, and her example, her assistance, her encouragement, has thrilled two continents in this Western World with all the fine impulses which have built up human liberty on both sides of the water. Woodrow Wilson, speech 29th January 1916
America is the only idealistic nation in the world. Woodrow Wilson, speech September 1919
I have never seen more senators express discontent with their jobs ... I think the major cause is that, deep down in our hearts, we have been accomplices in doing something terrible and unforgivable to our wonderful country. Deep down in our heart, we know that we have given our children a legacy of bankruptcy. We have defrauded our country to get ourselves elected. John Danforth
The uncertainties were over. There seemed little doubt about what was going to happen. America was going on the greatest gaudiest spree in history, and there was going to be plenty to tell about it. F Scott Fitzgerald, Early Success
It was an age of miracles. It was an age of art. It was an age of excess. And it was an age of satire. We were the most powerful nation. Who could tell us any longer what was fashionable and what was fun? It was a whole race going hedonistic. Deciding on pleasure. The jazz age now raced along under its own power served by great filling stations full of money. F Scott Fitzgerald, Echoes of the Jazz Age
Somebody had blundered. And the most expensive orgy in history was over. Now once more the belt is tight. And we summoned the proper expression of horror as we looked back on our wasted youth. Sometimes though there is a ghostly rumble among the drums. Enigmatic whispers in the trombones. That swings me back into the early twenties. When we drank wood alcohol and every day in every way grew better and better. And there was an abortive shortening of the skirts. And people you didn’t want to know said, Yes, we have no bananas. And it all seems rosy and romantic to us who were young men. Because we will never feel quite so intently about our surroundings any more. ibid.
My country owes me nothing. It gave me, as it gives every boy and girl, a chance. It gave me schooling, independence of action, opportunity for service and honor. Herbert Hoover
2The American system of rugged individualism. Herbert Hoover, speech 22nd October 1928
It was a decade-long natural catastrophe of Biblical proportions when the skies refused their rains. And plagues of grasshoppers and swarms of rabbits descended on parched fields. When bewildered families huddled in darkened rooms while angry winds shook their homes. Pillars of dust choked out the midday sun. Ken Burns’ The Dust Bowl: The Great Plough-Up, PBS 2012
The worst man-made ecological disaster in American history. ibid.
It was an epic of human pain and suffering. ibid.
Special excursion trains brought prospective buyers to the region by the thousands. ibid.
But as the Depression deepened elsewhere, prices of farm commodities collapsed. ibid.
Throughout 1933 the drought continued, and the black blizzards kept engulfing the southern plains. ibid.
‘We realise that some farmers have themselves contributed to this reaping of the whirlwind ... a direct punishment for our sins.’ Ken Burns' The Dust Bowl: Reaping the Whirlwind, letter Caroline Henderson to Secretary of Agriculture
‘It was a brown world.’ ibid. Dorothy Kleffman
By 1933 the people of the southern plains were already weary of the draught that had struck more than a year earlier, withering their crops and turning their barren fields into pulverized dust which the constant winds picked up and transformed into fearsome black blizzards ... In truth, the worst was yet to come. Ken Burns’ The Dust Bowl: Dust to Eat
‘Dust to eat, and dust to breathe, and dust to drink, dust in the beds and in the flower beds, on dishes and walls and windows … ibid.
One quarter of the county’s population now depended on New Deal jobs. ibid.
By 1936 nearly a quarter of the people living in the southern plains had begun to leave. Ken Burns’ The Dust Bowl: Hardy Ones
By the end of July the number of destructive storms would rise to 79, by the end of the year to 110. ibid.
Then in the early 1950s, when the wet cycle ended and a 2-year draught replaced it, the dust storms picked up once more. ibid.
It’d blister your face. It would put your eyes out ... That steady blow of dirt. Pauline Robertson
Some very shocking documents that I saw in the Library of Congress two weeks ago on August 9th and had to do with the Hearings from the McCormack/Dicksein Committee of November 1934 show that Prescott Bush and the Dupont family, the Remington family and J P Morgan tried to overthrow the US government – assassinate FDR – and put a Hitler-style Fascist state in place. John Buchanan
America’s foe in this war was not the Soviet Union or Japan, it was not even Nazi Germany. Plan Red was code for an apocalyptic war with Britain and all her dominions. The plan emerged from the great depression amid the rise of evil regimes; a time when even some in America had been seduced by dark forces. Revealed: America’s Planned War On Britain, 2011
There were times when we came closer than you might imagine. ibid.
Plan Red contains detailed preparations for a massive war between America and the British Empire. ibid.
After the Armistice mistrust turned to bitterness. ibid.
Back in 1935 it looked as if this was exactly what the American military was preparing for ... Why was America so threatened by Britain? ibid.
The Americans were happy to contemplate any measure to keep the British at bay. ibid.
How did we end up as such close allies a few years later? ibid.
Plan Red marks the point where one great empire faded as the next grew daily in stature and power. ibid.