20th Century United States - Barton Truscott: Getting Started

Example topics

Clinton Impeachment
Reagan's Star Wars (SDI)
Bakke Case
Persian Gulf War, 1991
Vietnamization (Nixon's Vietnam War Policy )
Nixon's Pardon
Korean War
Roe v Wade
New Deal
Woodrow Wilson at Versailles
Manned Space Exploration
Teddy Roosevelt and the Panama Canal
The Break-Up of Standard Oil
1960s Feminism
Malcolm X

If you want find additional topics beyond those above, try these resources.

Example Titles:

Richard M. Nixon : A Life in Full   

America's Uncivil Wars : The Sixties Era from Elvis to the Fall of Richard Nixon  

From Brown to Bakke : The Supreme Court and School Integration : 1945-1978   

Affirmative Action and Racial Preferences : A Debate   

Great Depression and the New Deal   

Franklin D. Roosevelt : New Deal and War   

Great Depression and the New Deal : A Very Short Introduction   

Making Malcolm : The Myth and Meaning of Malcolm X   

 Affair of State : The Investigation, Impeachment, and Trial of President Clinton   

Book covers of books in the SAAS Library

1. Choose a broad topic.
2. Explore it in order to narrow down to a controversial issue.
3. Express your controversy in one sentence.
4. Discuss with Barton; have him ok the controversy.
5. Begin pre-research on your topic.

You need 10 quality sources in total: here are some suggestions for places to look.

3 Books

• Search Our Catalog   (type saas for the library)
• Search Ebrary (SAAS e-books subscription database)
• Search Seattle Public Library
• Search King County Library
• Search WorldCat  (lists almost all books ever published in English)

If you can't find what you need, I can order a book or kindle book for you. You choose the title.  Email me: kjohnson@    We have kindles to lend. I cannot send a book to your personal Kindle however; Amazon doesn't play nice like that.

3 Database/Scholarly Journals

• Search this guide. See tabs for decades.  Home page offers general suggestions. Example: the various Presidential Libraries are listed on the home page. 
• Google
• Bing

2  Primary Sources

• See Primary Source tab above for an entire page dedicated to primary source sites on the web.

2  Additional Sources

• Search This Guide   (Use Home page and appropriate decade tab)
• SAAS Databases
• Presidential Libraries
• NY Times Historical Database - SPL
• NY Times Historical Database - KCLS
• Academic One File - SPL

Gain a general understanding of your controversy and be on the look out for vocabularly to use in your searches.

SAAS Library Catalog app: look for LibraryWorld in your favorite app store (see logo above). 

Mobile-friendly database page is here. 

Sample Titles:

PERSIAN GULF WAR

Correcting Myths about the Persian Gulf War: The Last Stand of the Tawakalna

Selling an Image: Girl Groups of the 1960s

Political Participation and Feminist Consciousness among Women Activists of the 1960s

The Formation of Feminist Consciousness among Left- and Right-Wing Activists of the 1960s

Panama Canal

The Panama Canal Treaties of 1977

The Legend of the Standard Oil Company

The Rise and Supremacy of the Standard Oil Company

Manned Space Exploration: Case for Apollo

Wrecked by Star Wars

Academic OneFile is a very helpful database offered by the Seattle Public Library. The document above written by our history teacher Steve Retz explains step-by-step how to access this database. You will need a library card and pin.