Term | Definition |
Baby boom | increase in births between 1945 and 1964 |
consumerism | large-scale buying, much of it on credit |
nuclear family | ideal or typical household with a father, mother, and children |
space race | competition between the United States and the Soviet Union to develop the technology to successfully land on the moon |
blacklist | list of person who were not hired because of suspected communist ties |
interstate highway act | 1956 law that authorized the spending of $32 billion to build 41,000 miles of highway |
mutually assured destruction | policy in which the United States and the Soviet Union hoped to deter nuclear war by building up enough weapons to destroy one another |
brinkmanship | belief that only by going to the brink of war could the United States protect itself against communist aggression |
Iron curtain | term coined by Winston Churchill to describe the border between the Soviet satellite states and western europe |
nato | military alliance between several North American and European states |
warsaw pact | military alliance of the Soviet Union and its satellite states |
eisenhower doctrine | policy of President Eisenhower that stated that the United States would use force to help any nation threatened by communism |
truman doctrine | President Trumans promise to help nation struggling against communist movement |
arms race | contest in which nations compete to build more powerful weapons |
38th parallel | dividing line between North and South Korea |
limited war | war fought to achieve only specific goals |
marshall plan | foreign policy that offered economic aid to the western european countries after world war II |
cold war | worldwide rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union |
satellite state | independent nation under the control of a more powerful nation |
ICBM | ballistic missiles |