| A | B |
|---|
| Levittown, NY | suburban community (model homes and communities) |
| baby boom | period with substantially higher than normal number of births |
| GNP | term for the value of all goods and services produced in a nation during a specific period |
| television | new industry with the greatest impact on American lives during the 1950s |
| television ministry / clergy | men like Billy Graham and Fulton J. Sheen |
| Dwight D. Eisenhower | republican candidate in 1952 |
| Adlai Stenvson | democratic candidate in 1952 |
| censure | public condemnation of a member of Congres for misconduct |
| Highway Act of 1956 | legislation to support connecting the nation's major cities |
| Sputnik | first artificial earth satellite which gave the Soviet's the upper hand in science and technology |
| Nikita Khrushchev | Soviet leader who agreed to stop nuclear testing |
| massive retaliation | use of nuclear wapons rather than fighting limited wars |
| Suez Canal | 100 mile waterway seized by Egypt in 1956 |
| Lebanon | Middle Eastern country divided by civil war, Eisenhower sent forces in 1958 to stop Soviet intervention |
| Iran | oil-rich country south of the Soviet Union where CIA reinstated the Shah |
| Joseph Stalin | Soviet leader who died in 1953 |
| Francis Gary Powers | U-2 plane pilot who crashed in the Soviet Union |
| John Foster Dulles | Eisenhower's Secretary of State and foreign policy expert |
| Fidel Castro | communist leader of Cuba since 1959 |
| U-2 incident | US spy plane captured by Soviets that caused Khrushchev to end meetings with Eisenhower |
| Commission on National Goals | organized to give the nation a new sense of purpose, called for increased military spending and scientific research |
| MIT | university in Cambridge chosen to oversee a crash program in missile development |
| ICBM | intercontinental ballistic missiles |
| Vanguard | first American satellite which rose only a few inches of the pad |
| Werner von Braun | German rocket scientist who gave America its first successful satellite Explorer |
| NASA | created by congress to train astronauts |
| white-collar workers | clerks, office workers, bank tellers |
| blue-collar workers | miners, factory workers, mechanics |
| beats (beatniks) | literary group that rebelled against the materialistic society of the 1950s |
| Jack Kerouac | his novel On the Road set the tone for the beats |
| Lawrence Ferlinghetti | poet who exchanged his philosophies on society in San Francisco |
| abstract expressionism | style of painting that rebelled against traditional values by abandoning realism |
| abstract painters | Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko |
| Rudolph Flesch | author of Why Johnny Can't Red |
| progressive education | phhilosophy that emphasized the teaching of practical skills for the workplace |
| traditional academic curriculum | reading, writing, math, science |
| consumer culture | society absorbed with its purchasing power, posessions, and money |
| Gamal Abdel Nasser | leader of Egypt during Suez Crisis |
| Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlavi | leader of Iran deposed by the Soviets, reinstated by the US |
| Richard M. Nixon | vice-president during Eisenhower's administration |
