Interview | Civil Rights | Cold War | Immigration
The Emergence of Martin Luther King pgs. 472-473
Mr Khrushchev Comes to Town pgs 478-479

Martin Luther KingIntroduction

Joe:
Now we will move on to our second excerpt which covers a pivotal time in our nation's history, The Cold War.
also see:
Harold Evans comments on Cold War

President Eisenhower and Nikita Khrushchev had this in common in 1959: they both thought their personal diplomacy could thaw the Cold War. America did not know what to make of the earthy, mercurial Khrushchev. Ousting his rivals, after Stalin's’ death in 1953, he had gone globetrotting for peace with Nikolay Bulganin, buried the hatchet with Yugoslavia’s Tito, pulled out of Austria and, in 1956, sensationally denounced Stalin’s crimes. But in the same year he brutally suppressed revolt in East Germany, Poland and Hungary, threatened Britain and France with rockets if they did not abandon their war to regain control of the Suez Canal, and followed up in 1958 by giving the Western powers an ultimatum to get out of Berlin. "It’s the testicles of the West," he typically said. "Each time I give them a yank, they holler." He was stunned and delighted in July 1959 to get an invitation from Eisenhower to come to the United States for ten days. The invitation was a goof. Eisenhower had told his advisors he would agree to a summit only if Khrushchev broke the stalemate in the foreign ministers’ talks at Geneva, and the talks were still stuck. He blew up, but relented. He wanted to go down in history as a man who made peace. He was fed up with the Pentagon’s constant demands for more weapons. He was no longer restrained by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, who had died in May.

Ike was eager to show off, too. From the White House, he whisked his guest into a helicopter to see the fine homes in the suburbs and the sweeping highways, a glimpse of the 41,000 miles of roads he had spent $76 billion building. To his chagrin, Khrushchev kept a poker face. The Soviet people, he told Ike, did not need to waste so much on cars, roads and houses. They preferred to live close together, and in apartments, unlike the restless Americans "who do not seem to like the place where they live and always want to be on the move going someplace." But for all that, he was impressed. He had simply not believed it when Richard Nixon had told him there were 60 million cars in America.

THE KITCHEN DEBATE: Vice President Nixon was the host to Khrushchev at the first-ever U.S. exhibition to Moscow, but he wanted to score points. So did Khrushchev. They volleyed more insults than thoughts, jabbing each other with a finger in the chest to prove that America was superior to the Soviet Union or vice versa. They stand at a kitchen of a model house, which Nixon said any steelworker or veteran could buy for $14,000 over 25 to 30 years. Khrushchev scoffed and exaggerated wildly that "all newly built Russian houses will have this equipment….If an American citizen does not have dollars, he has the right to sleep on the pavement at night." Photograph by William Safire.

Khrushchev, accompanied by family and some hundred Russian writers, artists and scientists, spent nearly a week traversing the continent like a presidential candidate. He worked the crowds, kissed babies, pinned hammer-and-sickle badges on children, laid a wreath at FDR’s grave, insisted on touring Harlem’s slums. His pungent, salty speeches went down well. In Pittsburgh, given the key to the city, he told the mayor, "And I promise you that this key will never be used without the host’s permission." He had a hard time understanding democratic ways. He debated with the United Automobile Workers’ Walter Reuther and his six vice presidents and concluded that were "agents for capitalists." He ran into hostile newsmen and pickets and raged that they were plants, but by the time he reached San Francisco he seemed to get the picture: "Poor Eisenhower, I am just beginning to understand what his problems are."

In Hollywood, he was upset to be told he could not tour Disneyland because they could not guarantee his security. He affected to be offended by what he saw of the filming of Can-Can. He turned his back on reporters, flipped up his coat in imitation of the dance: "This is what you call freedom – freedom for the girls to show their backsides. To us, it’s pornography….It’s capitalism that makes the girls that way."

Martin Luther KingIntroduction

The American Century
by Harold Evans, Gail Buckland, Kevin Baker

Painless American History (Painless)
by Curt Lader, Laurie Hamilton

The full span of American history is covered, starting with Columbus' landing, then proceeding to colonization, the Revolutionary War against England, the formation of a new government, American growth and expansion during the nineteenth century, and emergence as a major world power in the present century. Here are the discoveries, the personalities, the wars, the scientific and technological triumphs, the rough-and-tumble political campaigns, and all the other ingredients that add up to make a colorful and exciting chronicle. Timelines, ideas for fascinating Internet projects, and the authors light narrative style are just a few of the ingredients that ! make this a history book kids will enjoy reading.