The following are a list of some of the central questions we’ve asked along the way.
- What Where the 1960s?
- What was the impact of World War II? How were the 1960s shaped by that war?
- Why did the USA and USSR develop an ideologically-driven rivalry after 1945, one which was expressed in proxy-wars and a nuclear arms race that courted disaster for all of humankind?
- What were the political and cultural effects — in the USA and Globally — of the nuclear arms race?
- How does Herman Kahn change popular attitudes about nuclear war?
- How does the film ‘Dr. Strangelove’ reflect the ‘spirit’ of the early 1960s? What elements of society does Kubrik lampoon/criticize in his film? Is Dr. Strangelove an anti-American film?
- What accounts for the dramatic cultural changes between 1958 and 1972?
- Why did youth reject the lifestyle of their parents’ generation c.1960?
- Why did African-American culture suddenly go mainstream in the 1960s? What impact did that have on the evolution of music?
- What is Cuckoo’s Nest’s McMurphy’s relation to the ideas expressed by Hunter S. Thompson?
- Is Cuckoo’s Nest’s McMurphy a hipster as defined by Norman Mailer?
- What connections might be made between ‘Cuckoo’s Nest’ and the writing of A. Solzhenitsyn?
The Global 1960s 