H
ow do we write the history of our own time?
Generalizations—and certainly conclusions—are
necessarily provisional, for the changes wrought in
the late twentieth century are still unfolding, still
framing our own experience. But this chapter begins with
the 1960s for a reason: in that decade Americans used maps
to navigate challenges that persisted through the end of the
century. These include the disruptions brought by technology,
debates over the nation’s role abroad, and the ongoing
struggle to realize a more just, equal, and pluralistic society.
At the outset of this period, the Cold War remained the most
salient feature of American life. It set foreign priorities, guided
domestic politics, and even influenced the economy. Democrats
and Republicans alike accepted that the Soviet Union posed the
principal threat to the country’s security, a consensus that was
borne out in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Aerial photographs taken
in October 1962 revealed that the Soviets had covertly stationed
missiles just ninety miles off the Florida coast. On pages 234
and 236 are examples of the material evidence that President
John Kennedy and his advisers used to respond to the terrifying
prospect of a nuclear attack.
The Kennedy administration vigorously prosecuted the
Cold War in Asia as well, deepening military commitments in
Vietnam that would be extended further by President Lyndon
B. Johnson. As shown on page 238, the United States primarily
framed the conflict in Vietnam in terms of communism,
downplaying the equally important strain of nationalism that
sought to oust the French—and subsequently the Americans.
By 1968 the United States had deployed 500,000 young men
to Vietnam in a war that polarized Americans, deeply divided
the Democratic Party, and led to the election of Richard Nixon.
Though he promised to end the war, Nixon in fact intensified
the bombing campaign and launched an invasion of
Cambodia. In the spring of 1970, college students across the
country coordinated a massive antiwar protest in response,
and their tight communication networks and rejection of the
Cold War consensus are exhibited on page 240.
The Cold War even extended into outer space. Just a
few years after the launch of Sputnik, President Kennedy
announced the ambitious goal of landing a man on the
moon by the end of the decade. The progress of the
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)riveted Americans in the 1960s, and exposed them to an
entirely new extraterrestrial reality. In 1968, the astronauts
of Apollo 8 became the first to orbit the moon, yet it was
their photographs of earth that captivated the public. The
most powerful image of the decade—and one of the most
reproduced images of the century—was a picture of our
own planet, one that simultaneously evoked fragility and
possibility (page 244).
In the same year, the artist Heinrich Berann drew an
equally consequential view of the Atlantic Ocean floor that
made both an artistic and a scientific contribution. Berann’s
profile was based on years of research by Marie Tharp and
Bruce Heezen, who synthesized information about the oceans
in order to advance general theories about plate tectonics.
Berann’s dazzling artistic technique struck a chord with
the American public, and helped to expose a generation to
this new idea (page 242). In this regard, the profiles of the
ocean floor not only “mapped” some of the last geographical
mysteries, but also became evidence for the radical new
science of continental drift. The geological research
undergirding this theory stretched back to the nineteenth
century, but was accelerated significantly by the Cold War.
In guiding investment in science and technology, the
Cold War also influenced patterns of migration. NASA centers
were built in Texas, Florida, and Alabama, while Southern
California boomed with the growth of aerospace and other
defense industries. As the maps on page 250 illustrate, these
opportunities reconfigured the nation by drawing Americans
out of the Northeast and the Midwest to the South and West.
But these demographic shifts also sparked unexpected
reversals, including a notable migration out of California
by the 1990s.
Domestic and internal migration only partly explains the
nation’s reconfiguration in the second half of the twentieth
century. From 1965 to 2000, 20 million immigrants entered
the United States, chiefly from Latin America, the Caribbean,
and Asia. These numbers exceeded the wave at the turn of
the nineteenth century, though in that earlier era immigrants
constituted a much larger proportion of the total population.
This expansion of immigration stemmed from the easing of
longstanding entry quotas and restrictions in 1965. Within this
more recent phase, it has been the Latino population whichAn Unsettled Peace