HY422 explores the interaction between opinion and policy in three periods: First, the Roosevelt era, with emphasis on FDR’s response to American isolationism, the media and public attitudes towards the Axis power, and the influence of public pressures upon US policy. Second, the period of consensus on the Cold War, examining how Americans viewed the Communist world before, during and after the Korean War, the influence of the atomic bomb upon popular thinking, the limits of dissent in the period of McCarthyism, and the impact of public opinion upon policy- making during the Berlin and Cuban crises. Third, the period when the Cold War consensus broke down, focusing not just on the opposition to the Vietnam war and the new cleavages that emerged within US society but also on the changing nature of the American media and the very different attempts made by Nixon, Carter and Reagan to respond to this new environment.