The 1960s were years of great and shocking events: assassins gunned down three national figures, including a president; President John F. Kennedy (1917–1963; served 1961–63) narrowly averted a nuclear war with a high-stakes bluff; civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) inspired the nation with his grand dream for a better nation; President Lyndon Johnson sent soldiers to fight a war in distant Vietnam; President Richard Nixon launched a spaceship that placed a man on the moon; the Beatles, an English rock band, "invaded" America; hippies "turned on, tuned in, and dropped out"; African Americans rioted in the streets of American cities; and the Green Bay Packers formed a football dynasty. With the exception of the assassinations, these were not isolated events. In fact, they were expressions of larger social...