Changing International affairs and the forces of technological innovation shaped the lives of Americans in the last decades of the 20th century. While the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union gave rise to hopes of peaceful international relations, the Gulf War and the attacks of September 11, 2001 on the World Trade Center in New York shattered these aspirations. In the social sphere, cell phones, CDs, and the Internet completely transformed the ways by which people communicated and conveyed information. The election of an African-American man to the presidency marked the successful continuation of the struggle for equal civil rights, bolstering America's reputation as a radically changing place in this contemporary period.

 

This book is part of a book series called Handbooks To Life in America .

This book is aimed at children in secondary school.

There are 291 pages in this book. This book was published 2009 by Facts On File Inc .

General editor Rodney P. Carlisle earned his B. A. in history from Harvard and both his M. A. and Ph. D in history from the University of California in Berkeley. He is a former chair of the history department at Rutgers University in Camden where he taught for more than 30 years specializing in 20th-century history. Carlisle is now professor emeritus there. He has written and edited many articles and more than 10 books on history, including The Thirties in Facts On File's Day by Day series