Complete Idiot’s Guide to American History

number of Americans, few days go by without a personal visit to it.

A network of computer networks, the Internet is an information superhighway and also a forum, the ultimate town square, a place where ideas can be aired, shared, and debated. As yet, the Internet is unregulated by any government agency. Is the Internet democracy? No. Democracy cannot be reduced to this or that technology. But the Internet is an expression of democracy, a fervent wish to be democratic, to hear and to be heard, to share, to communicate, to connect with one’s neighbors—next-door and around the world—and to be at the center of a great web that offers infinite centers (since, on the Internet, the center is wherever you happen to be).

Will the Internet make democracy any easier? Maybe, maybe not. But, more important, after the more than 200 years since the Constitution was written with pen and ink in the painstakingly graceful hand of the 18th century, the binary 0s and 1s, the light-speed ebb and flow of electrons through the Internet continue to embody the passion, the ideals, the dreams of those who founded the nation and those who have nurtured it for so long. Whether penned with a quill or tapped out on a keyboard, the message is the same: E pluribus unum—From many, one.

The Least You Need to Know

The 1990s have been characterized by discontent, political extremism, and rage that threaten democracy, but also by a renewed passion to gather and share information and ideas, the very elements that keep democracy strong.

A revolution in electronic media, born in large part of an impulse to democracy, may well promote and preserve democratic values in the next millennium.

Stats

Even though Perot dropped out of the race for a time (stunning his many supporters), he won 19,237,247 votes, an astounding 19 percent of the popular vote total.

Word for the Day

After World War II, from 1947 to 1961, the birth rate sharply rose in America. This period was described as a baby boom, and those born during this time were baby boomers. Those born between 1961 and 1972, typically college educated but chronically pessimistic and vaguely dissatisfied with career possibilities, have been dubbed Generation X, a label drawn from a novel of that name by Douglas Coupland.

Word for the Day

During the 1980s and 1990s, Americans heard a great deal about PACs. A PAC–Political Action Committee–is a special interest group, lobby, or pressure group organized to raise money for specific political activity.

Word for the Day

“In God We Trust” is plain enough English. The Great Seal of the United States, reproduced on the dollar bill, also Includes two phrases of Latin: Annuit coeptis (“He has favored our undertakings) and Novus ordo seclorum (“A new order of the ages”).

Real Life

Newt (Newton Leroy) Gingrich (b. 1943), elected U.S. Congressman from Georgia’s 6th District in 1979, became Speaker of the House in 1995. Intensely, abrasively partisan, the eloquent Gingrich brilliantly masterminded the Republican party’s so-called “Contact with America.” This conservative legislative agenda promised smaller government, more responsive government, and a renewal of a sense of opportunity in American life. Gingrich has drawn ardent admiration from conservatives and equally contempt from liberals.

Stats

In the 1980 presidential election, Libertarian candidate Ed Clark polled 920,8569 votes, but candidate David Bergland received only 227,949 votes in 1984. Ron Paul garnered 409,412 votes in 1988, and Andre Marrou received 281,508 votes in 1992.

Voice from the Past

“People, I just want to say, you know, can we all get along? Can we get along? Can we stop making it, making it horrible for the older people and the kids?”

Rodney King, spoken during the Los Angeles riots, May 2, 1992

Main Event

The very last year of the 19th century saw the invention of radio—at the time called the “wireless telegraph”—by the Italian-Irish inventor Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937). Twenty-one years later, Pittsburgh’s station KDKA made what is generally considered the first commercial radio broadcast in the United States (an announcement of election results), and electronic mass media was born. In 1933, a Russian-born American engineer for RCA, Vladimir Zworykin (1889-1982), having invented and patented in 1925 the “iconoscope” (basis of the modern “picture tube”), broadcast a television image over a radio-wave relay between New York and Philadelphia. It took well over a decade for the new medium to catch on with the American public, but in 1948,