Franklin D. Roosevelt's World War II dream of one world living in peace and prosperity, its quarrels settled in a United Nations, did not long survive. Almost as soon as the shooting stopped, the United States and the Soviet Union divided the world into two armed camps and began the Cold War -- a war that would last nearly fifty years.

This program traces the progress of the Cold War, the much hotter war in Korea, and the CIA-planned coups in Guatemala and Iran. On the home front, we follow the growth and collapse of the specter of McCarthyism.

In another arena the images are in black versus white, as the civil rights movement gathers momentum and sit-ins shake the South. The launch of Sputnik,I sends a chill through the nation and catapults us into the space race. And, as the presidency of Truman gives way to that of Dwight Eisenhower and then to the hairbreadth victory of John F. Kennedy over Richard Nixon, new words and phrases enter our national vocabulary. Camelot. The Bay of Pigs. The Cuban Missile Crisis. Dealey Plaza.