Prologue -- A Study in Contrasts

After 80 years filled with wars interspersed by uneasy moments of peace, a great depression and unalloyed prosperity, assassinations and atomic energy, Americans in the last two decades of the 20th century might have hoped for a sustained period of calm.

No such luck. Instead, the last 20 years have been a study in wildly fluctuating contrasts.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan (at age 69) became the oldest person ever elected President of the United States. Twelve years later, Bill Clinton (age 46) became the second-youngest person ever elected to that office.

In one sense, it was a period of unparalleled prosperity. The country labored through an economic recession in the early 1990s but by the end of the decade had basked in several years of minuscule inflation and sustained economic growth. The New York Stock Exchange's Dow Jones Industrial Average, which was as low as 759.13 in 1980, climbed to with a fraction of the 3,000 level in 1990. By May, 1999, it had topped the 11,000 mark.

Yet this was also an era when the word "downsizing" entered the American employment lexicon. Millions of people lost jobs in manufacturing, defense and other areas. Others saw their standard of living drastically reduced as they re-trained for new employment. Two-income families became the norm, a far cry from the "Ozzie and Harriet" family model of the 1950s.

The Soviet Union -- for half a century the focus of America's foreign policy and defense strategies -- collapsed in 1991. The Berlin Wall, long a symbol of Communism, was torn down in 1989. Peace accords were signed in Northern Ireland and between Israel and its Palestine neighbors. Apartheid died in South Africa. However, several times during the 1980s and 1990s, America and other NATO nations committed air power and troops to battle dictators in Africa, Iraq, Bosnia, Serbia and other hot spots.

Space exploration entered a new era when the first space shuttle was launched in 1981. Five years later, the world watched in horror as the shuttle Challenger exploded a minute after lifting off from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Shuttle flights eventually resumed and as the century closed the Russians and Americans were collaborating on the space station Mir.

Perhaps the most uplifting moment in space during the two-decade span occurred on July 4, 1997, when Pathfinder, an unmanned exploration vehicle built at Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, landed on Mars and transmitted dramatic, four-color photos of the Martian surface back to earth.

Chapter 1 -- Re-shaping Southern California 

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