FDR and the Depression: Professor Brinkley continues his story of twentieth-century presidents with a profile of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Brinkley paints a picture of America during the Depression and chronicles some of Roosevelt's programmatic and personal efforts to help the country through its worst economic crisis. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt is at FDR's side and, in many respects, ahead of him as the decade unfolds. World War II: America is enveloped in total war, from mobilization on the home front to a scorching air war in Europe. Professor Miller's view of World War II is a personal essay on the morality of total war, and its effects on those who fought, died, and survived it, including members of his own family. The Fifties: World War II is fought to its bitter end in the Pacific and the world lives with the legacy of its final moment: the atomic bomb. Professor Miller continues the story as veterans return from the war and create new lives for themselves in the 1950s. The GI Bill, Levittown, civil rights, the Cold War, and rock 'n roll are discussed. The Sixties: Professor Scharff weaves the story of the Civil Rights movement with the stories of the Vietnam War and Watergate create a portrait of a decade. Lyndon Johnson emerges as a pivotal character, along with Stokely Carmichael, Fannie Lou Hamer, and other luminaries of the era.