John F. Kennedy entered the White House with his young family in January 1961. He was the youngest man elected president of the United States, and the only Catholic so far. He only served for about three years, or a thousand days, but his legacy remains among the most widely discussed and debated. H.W. Brands focuses on two episodes more than any other: the Cuban Missile Crisis and the civil rights protests that escalated dramatically in the early 1960s. How would you assess Kennedy’s leadership in those pivotal areas? Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon Johnson, seemed far less glamorous than Kennedy and yet he achieved more revolutionary change in domestic legislation than any president since Franklin Roosevelt. How did he accomplish so much so quickly during the mid-1960s? Which legislative actions were the most historically significant? Which proved to be the 
most controversial? Taken together, these various programs, dubbed “The Great Society” by Johnson and his admirers, represented a dramatic transformation in the role of the federal government. Take a moment and try to identify some of the biggest changes in American life and politics that had occurred in the century since the end of the Civil War.
