The 1620s were a time of political and religious turmoil in England. The protracted struggle for supremacy between monarch and Parliament reached new heights in 1629, when King Charles I disbanded the rival body and ruled alone for 11 years. Official pressure was also applied on religious dissenters, notably the the Pilgrims and the Puritans. Some were imprisoned for their nonconformist views and others lost lucrative official positions.  Time to find a New World in which to build a "City Upon a Hill."

The New World wasn't exactly new.  Native Americans, for thousands of years, prospered before European contact.  Spain possessed much of South America, while France acquired the central portions of North America.  On May 14, 1607, a group of roughly 100 British members of a joint venture called the Virginia Company founded the first permanent English settlement in North America on the banks of the James River. Famine, disease and conflict with local Native American tribes in the first two years brought this Atlantic coastal colony to the brink of failure before the arrival of a new group of settlers and supplies in 1610. 

By November 1967, the number of American troops in Vietnam was approaching 500,000, and U.S. casualties had reached 15,058 killed and 109,527 wounded. As the war stretched on, some soldiers came to mistrust the government’s reasons for keeping them there, as well as Washington’s repeated claims that the war was being won.  Bombarded by horrific images of the war on their televisions, Americans on the home front turned against the war as well.  In October 1967, some 35,000 demonstrators staged a massive Vietnam War protests outside the Pentagon.  Opponents of the war argued that civilians, not enemy combatants, were the primary victims and that the United States was supporting a corrupt dictatorship in Saigon.  Amid this turbulent time, a counterculture of flower power was also emerging, giving way to sex, drugs, and scores of unforgettable music.

During World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union fought together as allies against the Axis powers. However, the relationship between the two nations was a tense one. Americans had long been wary of Soviet communism and concerned about Russian leader Joseph Stalin’s tyrannical, blood-thirsty rule of his own country. For their part, the Soviets resented the Americans’ decades-long refusal to treat the USSR as a legitimate part of the international community as well as their delayed entry into World War II, which resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of Russians. After the war ended, these grievances ripened into an overwhelming sense of mutual distrust and enmity. Postwar Soviet expansionism in Eastern Europe fueled many Americans’ fears of a Russian plan to control the world. Meanwhile, the USSR came to resent what they perceived as American officials’ bellicose rhetoric, arms buildup and interventionist approach to international relations. In such a hostile atmosphere, no single party was entirely to blame for the Cold War; in fact, some historians believe it was inevitable.

On June 6, 1944 – observed as “D-Day” - the Allied began a massive invasion of Europe, landing 156,000 British, Canadian and American soldiers on the beaches of Normandy, France. In response, Hitler poured all the remaining strength of his army into the Battle of the Bulge, the last major German offensive of the war.  Meanwhile in the Pacific, heavy casualties sustained in the campaigns at Iwo Jima and Okinawa, and fears of the even costlier land invasion of Japan led Truman to authorize the use of a new and devastating weapon – the atomic bomb – on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  The Second World War was over, but at a tremendous cost to not only "The Greatest Generation," but the entire world.

The New Deal was a series of programs and projects instituted during the Great Depression by President Franklin D. Roosevelt that aimed to restore prosperity to Americans. When Roosevelt took office in 1933, he acted swiftly to stabilize the economy and provide jobs and relief to those who were suffering. Over the next eight years, the government instituted a series of experimental New Deal projects and programs, such as the CCC, the WPA, the TVA, the SEC and others, that aimed to restore some measure of dignity and prosperity to many Americans. Roosevelt’s New Deal fundamentally and permanently changed the federal government’s relationship to U.S. citizens.

The Roaring 20s conjures up images of happy people dancing the Charleston, listening to jazz in Harlem nightclubs, and drinking bathtub gin.  In many ways this was a decade dominated by optimism, as people enjoyed the conveniences that technology brought into their lives.  Yet the 1920s were also marked by some troubling trends and events, and not everybody enjoyed the "Coolidge Prosperity."  There was a resurgence of racism in the Jim Crow South, the trend of nativism flourished, and the country was divided over the role of the Bible in public schools.  It's no wonder that writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Sinclair Lewis were part of a Lost Generation, looking for some meaning in 20th century modernity.

The war was over and many Americans spent the 1920s in a great mood. Investors flocked to a rising stock market. Companies launched brand-new, cutting-edge products, like radios and washing machines. Exuberant Americans kicked up their heels to jazz music, tried crazy stunts, and supported a black market in liquor after Prohibition. A popular expression of the time asked, “What will they think of next?” Bootleggers, flappers, bathtub gin - life is roaring and the music is hot, and the whole country is dancing to the beat of the Charleston. Well, maybe not the whole country.

At the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, the Great War ends. At 5 a.m. that morning, Germany, bereft of manpower and supplies and faced with imminent invasion, signed an armistice agreement with the Allies in a railroad car outside Compiégne, France. The First World War left nine million soldiers dead and 21 million wounded.  In Paris the following year, a treaty would be signed, but not all in Europe - or the United States for that matter approved.  Selling his own plan would be President Wilson's demise, as America turned its eyes from international affairs back to the homefront.

On June 26, the first 14,000 U.S. infantry troops landed in France to begin training for combat. But not everyone wanted to join. It took a large propaganda effort and a draft to fill the ranks. It worked. The entrance of America’s well-supplied forces into the conflict marked a major turning point in the war and helped the Allies to victory. When the war finally ended, on November 11, 1918, more than two million American soldiers had served on the battlefields of Western Europe, and some 50,000 of them had lost their lives.

During the summer of 1914, the tensions in Europe that had been growing for many years culminated with the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand by a Serbian terrorist organization. Within less than a month, two coalitions emerged—the Central Powers and the Allied Powers. As war raged in Europe, President Woodrow Wilson argued that the United States should remain neutral in this conflict.  But that neutrality was short-lived, after a series of events tested the President and a nation. How far can the United States be pushed, before it pushes back?