• Discuss the reasons for the United States’ escalating military involvement in Vietnam under Johnson, and explain the growing disillusionment with the war both among U.S. troops and Americans at home.

•Trace the emergence and decline of the antiwar movement, the New Left, and the counterculture, and compare their approaches to social and political problems.

• Explain the rising dissatisfaction of minorities of color with American society, as well as the reasons for their increasing militancy.

• Account for the resentment and disgust felt by many in "Middle America" towards those who embraced the antiwar movement, the counterculture, the sexual revolution, feminism, and various forms of minority-group militancy.

• Identify the candidates, major issues, campaign strategies, and pivotal events that shaped the elections of 1968 and 1972. Explain the outcomes of those elections.

• Describe Nixon’s strategy for dealing with Vietnam, China and the Soviet Union, and the Third World, and assess the success or failure of his policies in each arena.

• Outline Nixon’s approach to key domestic problems, including the economy, science funding, and the environment.

• Summarize the Nixon administration’s abuses of power, including the Watergate break-in and cover-up. Understand the reasons for Nixon’s eventual downfall, and the legacies of the Nixon era for American society, politics, and foreign policy.

1960 Birth control pills become commercially available.

1962 SDS issues Port Huron Statement.

César Chavez helps organize the National Farm Workers’ Association.

1964 Gulf of Tonkin resolution.

Berkeley Free Speech Movement.

1964–68 Race riots in New York, Detroit, Los Angeles, and other cities.

1965 Operation Rolling Thunder begins.

University of Michigan inaugurates the teach-in.

Assassination of Malcolm X.

1966 Ronald Reagan wins the California governor’s race.

1967 Human Be-In in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.

1967 Arab-Israeli War.

Antiwar march on the Pentagon.

1968 Tet Offensive.

My Lai massacre.

Johnson withdraws from presidential race.

Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination.

Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination.

Feminists demonstrate at Miss America pageant.

Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey debuts.

Kerner Commission reports on race riots.

Richard M. Nixon elected president.

1969 Apollo 11 lands on the moon.

Woodstock Festival.

Rolling Stones’s Altamont concert.

1970 Premier of M*A*S*H.

Invasion of Cambodia.

Kent State and Jackson State slayings.

Establishment of the EPA.

1971 Nixon imposes wage and price controls to curb stagflation.

New York Times publishes the Pentagon Papers.

1972 Nixon’s visit to China.

SALT Agreement signed.

The Watergate break-in.

Christmas bombing of North Vietnam.

1973 United States and North Vietnam negotiate settlement.

Chile’s Allende ousted in CIA-supported coup.

Yom Kippur War.

Ervin Committee begins Watergate hearings.

Spiro Agnew resigns; Gerald Ford appointed vice-president.

War Powers Act passed.

1973–74 OPEC oil embargo.

1974 House Judiciary Committee adopts articles of impeachment.

Nixon resigns; Ford becomes president.