Big Science the combining of theoretical work with sophisticated engineering in a large organization in order to attack extremely difficult problems. (p. 1006)

Big Three Russia, the United States, and England. (p. 990)

Brezhnev Doctrine doctrine created after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, according to which the Soviet Union and its allies had the right to intervene in any socialist country whenever they saw the need. (p. 1006)






Christian Democrats progressive Catholics and revitalized Catholic political parties that became influential after the Second World War. (p. 995)

cold war the period after World War II during which the world was politically divided between Western/democratic and Eastern/communist nations. (p. 993)

Common Market the European Economic Community, created by the six nations of the Coal and Steel Community in 1957. (p. 997)






decolonization the reversal of Europe’s overseas expansion caused by the rising demand of Asian and African peoples for national self-determination, racial equality, and personal dignity. (p. 999)

de-Stalinization the liberalization of the post-Stalin Soviet Union, led by reformer Nikita Krhrushchev. (pp. 1003-4)

détente the progressive piecemeal relaxation of cold war tensions. (p. 1015)






Marshall Plan Secretary of State George C. Marshall’s plan of economic aid to Europe to help it rebuild, which Stalin refused for all of Eastern Europe. (p. 992)

misery index the combined rates of inflation and unemployment. (p. 1019)






NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization, an anti-Soviet military alliance of Western governments. (p. 992)

neocolonialism a system designed to perpetuate Western economic domination and undermine the promise of political independence, thereby extending to Africa (and much of Asia) the economic subordination that the United States had established in Latin America in the nineteenth century. (p. 1000)






OPEC the Arab-led Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. (p. 1019)






Watergate scandal in which Nixon’s assistants broke into the Democratic Party headquarters in July 1972. (p. 1015)