About This Database

Researchers' First Step Toward Understanding Today's Most Important and Controversial Issues

Issues and Controversies helps researchers understand today's crucial issues by exploring hundreds of hot topics in politics, government, business, society, education, and popular culture. Updated weekly, with a 14-year backfile, Issues and Controversies offers in-depth articles made to inspire thought-provoking debates. Its straightforward presentation of the key facts, arguments, history, and current context of today's most important and timely issues make the database an ideal resource for research papers, debate preparation, and persuasive writing assignments. The articles are written by Facts On File's own expert writers and editors. The content is original and proprietary, meaning the database does not lose information over time.

Features:

• More than 900 timely, in-depth, and objective articles, exploring today's controversial issues in language student researchers can understand
• Pro and Con statements, focusing researchers' thinking about a topic
• Issues from the headlines, such as military conflicts, government bailouts, energy policy, health care, college tuition costs, and infotainment
• Editorial cartoons, newspaper editorials, and discussion questions and activities, along with objective coverage, illustrating the range of opinions and prompting researchers to do their own critical thinking and analysis
• Bill of Rights in Debate, deepening understanding of constitutional issues in contemporary life
• "Need a Research Topic?" jump-starting student research
• Thousands of timelines, primary source documents, and statistical tables, providing context and perspective
• Interviews with experts, giving a range of views on key issues
• Links to key news coverage and other background information, giving context to the discussion
• Full Almanac and Encyclopedia
• Curriculum Tools, promoting classroom use, with practical activities and research tools for students and educators
• Full coverage of each National High School Debate Topic
• Convenient functions, including persistent record links, save-to-folder, and citation display.