Portrait of a Decade

by Elizabeth Campling

Published 5 February 1989
Part of a series aimed at GCSE Modern World History courses, this book uses a newspaper format to build up a picture of each year of the 1980s. It covers world news and cultural and scientific events, encourages the reader to pick out historical trends, and is suitable for both project work and classroom discussion. The books promote a sense of chronology by "freezing" individual years, and by following themes over a 10 year period the reader can trace major developments and trends. For each year there is a lead story - the item that dominated the world's headlines - then spreads on world news, sport and the arts, and science and technology. The text is interspersed with a wide range of source material, both written and visual, and each book includes a time chart, biographical notes on key figures of the decade, a list of books for further reading and an index.