1980s - Clint Twist

This book is part of a series that looks at the dramatic events, important changes and major figures in world history in ten-year periods. Each book contains year-by-year accounts of world affairs, eye-witness reports, developments in science and technology, style and fashion, inventions, discoveries and "firsts" in sport and exploration. This book looks at the 1980s, a decade in which pressure for change was felt all over the world. Mikhail Gorbachev introduced new policies in the USSR, and calls for democracy were heard from Eastern Europe to China. Most developed countries enjoyed a decade of prosperity, despite a stock market crash, and public awareness of environmental issues grew.;Three major conflicts dragged on for nearly the whole ten years: thousands died in the Iran and Iraq war; in Afghanistan, the mujahaddin fought a long war against the Russian invaders; on the shores of the Mediterranean, Lebanon was torn apart by internal strife and foreign invasion. At the beginning of the 1980s, the main new power was militant Islam. In Tehran, the Ayatollah Khomeini preached Islamic fundamentalism, imposing strict traditional values on Iranian society. Against this background, the book covers many other events, including the discovery of the disease AIDS, the advent of the Americans' "Star Wars" defence system, the famine of Ethiopia, the Chernobyl disaster in Russia and the dismantling of the Berlin Wall.