Meanwhile, on earth, whole systems of thought were being altered: in the UK, in May 1979, Margaret Thatcher, leader of the Conservative Party, became the first woman to serve as prime minister. In China, Deng Xiaoping was consolidating his rule and opening up Communist China. They introduced a market revolution on opposite sides of the planet. In the United States, Republican Ronald Reagan would become president in 1981, ushering in a decade of social conservatism in the United States and marking the end of America’s own era of leftist revolutionary fervor.
