Welcome to THE MAKING OF A NATION -- American history in VOA Special English. I'm Steve Ember.This week in our series, we take a look at life in the United States during the last decade of the twentieth century.For most of the nineteen nineties, the nation was at peace.The Soviet Union collapsed in nineteen ninety-one, bringing an end to years of costly military competition.During the nineties the American economy recovered from a recession and grew strong. Inflation and unemployment were low.There were new developments in medicine and technology.The Internet began to evolve from a defense project mainly linking researchers into a new way for the world to communicate.America grew by almost thirty-three million people during the nineteen nineties -- the largest increase of any decade in its history.By the end of the nineties more than two hundred eighty-million people were living in the United States.During the decade of the nineties, there was a large increase in immigration from Latin America, the Caribbean and Asia.
