The book is divided into section dealing with the Cold War, Emergence of mass consumption, Kennedy, Civil Rights, The Great Society, Radicalism, Women's Liberation, Vietnam, the conservative movement and more. This is done through articles written mostly during the time period being examined and through actual speeches and documents that most Americans have heard of or know parts of but never read in its entirety. Those were fascinating to me and I learned so much about this time period. There were entirely too many holes in my knowledge of how our present-day economy, politics, deficit, foreign policy developed. Unfortunately I have no answers as to how to get us out of our predicament but do understand how we arrived here. Read for school and it was an awesome quarter.