A for Athlete
Register
Advertisement

United States of America, USA[]

Background[]

  • Colors: Red, White and Blue
  • Flag: Flag of the United States
  • Time zone:
  • Natural wonders:
Stamps-US-5

External Links[]

Insights[]

Details[]

Languages[]

Simple Slogans[]

    • Editor's Tips
  • Hello =
  • Thank you =
  • News =
  • Sports =
  • Athlete =

Regional Slogans[]

    • Editor's Tip

People[]

  • Population in year =

Heros[]

2014 rostersoccer

Members of the 2014 United States (also known as USA) Flag of the United States Soccer team.

Thank_You,_America

Thank You, America

Sporting Stars with 2012 Blogs[]

Cultural Stars[]

  • Celeb Figure -- replace name

A for Athlete[]

    • Tips

Friends[]

Leads[]

Schools[]

Olympics[]

Beijing 2008 Olympics[]

Notes

Summary[]

Past Olympic Memories[]

Sport in Society[]

School sports[]

Physical Education[]

University sports[]

Fitness[]

Games[]

Play[]

Media[]

Newspapers[]

TV, video, cinema[]

Radio and Podcasts[]

Wikis[]

Blogs[]

Discussions, forums, newsgroups[]

Open Source[]

Places[]

Sporting sites[]

Urban[]

Rural[]

Nature[]

Communities, Villages[]

In the garden[]

Business[]

Wikinomics[]

  • Editor tips

Buzz[]

  • Tell us what's hot.

Brands[]

Global brands

Sports sponsors[]

Imports[]

Exports[]

Sweatshops[]

  • Editors tips on sweatshops

Government[]

Diplomats and Embassy Notes[]

Friction[]

Rivals[]

  • Test matches against foes are more intense.

History[]

Travel[]

Destinations[]

  • Don't miss spaces:

Photos[]

Locals travel to:[]

Visitors from abroad often include:[]

Travel accounts[]

Music[]

Notes and pointers to tunes.

Dates[]

Holidays[]

Sporting Festivals[]


The United States of America is a constitutional federal republic comprising fifty states and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its forty-eight contiguous states and Washington, D.C., the capital district, lie between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, bordered by Canada to the north and Mexico to the south. The state of Alaska is in the northwest of the continent, with Canada to its east and Russia to the west across the Bering Strait, and the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific. The United States also possesses several territories, or insular areas, scattered around the Caribbean and Pacific.

At 3.79 million square miles (9.83 million km²) and with more than 300 million people, the United States is the third or fourth largest country by total area, and third largest by land area and by population. The United States is one of the world's most ethnically diverse nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many countries.[1] The U.S. economy is the largest national economy in the world, with a nominal 2006 gross domestic product (GDP) of more than US$13 trillion (over 19% of the world total based on purchasing power parity).[2][3]

The nation was founded by thirteen colonies of Great Britain located along the Atlantic seaboard. Proclaiming themselves "states," they issued the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The rebellious states defeated Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War, the first successful colonial war of independence.[4] A federal convention adopted the current United States Constitution on September 17, 1787; its ratification the following year made the states part of a single republic. The Bill of Rights, comprising ten constitutional amendments, was ratified in 1791.

In the nineteenth century, the United States acquired land from France, Spain, the United Kingdom, Mexico, and Russia, and annexed the Republic of Texas and the Republic of Hawaii. Disputes between the agrarian South and industrial North over states' rights and the expansion of the institution of slavery provoked the American Civil War of the 1860s. The North's victory prevented a permanent split of the country and led to the end of slavery in the United States. The Spanish-American War and World War I confirmed the nation's status as a military power. In 1945, the United States emerged from World War II as the first country with nuclear weapons, a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, and a founding member of NATO. In the post–Cold War era, the United States is the only remaining superpower—accounting for approximately 50% of global military spending—and the dominant economic, political, and cultural force in the world.[5]


The United States (USA) has sent athletes to every celebration of the modern Olympic Games, except the 1980 Summer Olympics, which it boycotted. The United States Olympic Committee (USOC) is the National Olympic Committee for the United States.

Tom Burke was the first athlete to represent the United States at the Olympics. He took first place in both the 100 meters and the 400 meters of the 1896 Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece.

American athletes have won a total of 2191 medals at the Summer Olympic Games and another 216 at the Winter Olympic Games. More medals have been won in athletics (track and field) (718, 30%) and swimming (458, 19%) than any others. The United States is the only country to have won at least one gold medal at every Winter Olympics.

Hosted Games[]

The United States has hosted the Games on eight occasions, four times each for the Summer and Winter Games:

Games Host city Dates Nations Participants Events
1904 Summer Olympics St. Louis, Missouri July 1November 23 12 651 91
1932 Winter Olympics Lake Placid, New York February 415 17 252 14
1932 Summer Olympics Los Angeles, California July 30August 14 37 1332 117
1960 Winter Olympics Squaw Valley, California February 1828 30 665 27
1980 Winter Olympics Lake Placid, New York February 1324 37 1072 38
1984 Summer Olympics Los Angeles, California July 28August 12 140 6829 221
1996 Summer Olympics Atlanta, Georgia July 18August 4 197 10318 271
2002 Winter Olympics Salt Lake City, Utah February 824 77 2399 78

Medal tables[]

Template:See also

Medals by Summer Games[]

1896 Athens 11 7 2 20
1900 Paris 19 14 14 47
1904 St. Louis (host nation) 79 83 80 242
1908 London 23 12 12 47
1912 Stockholm 25 19 19 63
1920 Antwerp 41 27 27 95
1924 Paris 45 27 27 99
1928 Amsterdam 22 18 16 56
1932 Los Angeles (host nation) 41 32 30 103
1936 Berlin 24 20 12 56
1948 London 38 27 19 84
1952 Helsinki 40 19 17 76
1956 Melbourne/Stockholm 32 25 17 74
1960 Rome 34 21 16 71
1964 Tokyo 36 26 28 90
1968 Mexico City 45 28 34 107
1972 Munich 33 31 30 94
1976 Montreal 34 35 25 94
1980 Moscow did not participate
1984 Los Angeles (host nation) 83 61 30 174
1988 Seoul 36 31 27 94
1992 Barcelona 37 34 37 108
1996 Atlanta (host nation) 44 32 25 101
2000 Sydney 38 24 32 94
2004 Athens 36 39 27 102
Total 896 692 603 2191

Medals by Winter Games[]

1924 Chamonix 1 2 1 4
1928 St. Moritz 2 2 2 6
1932 Lake Placid (host nation) 6 4 2 12
1936 Garmisch-Partenkirchen 1 0 3 4
1948 St. Moritz 3 4 2 9
1952 Oslo 4 6 1 11
1956 Cortina d'Ampezzo 2 3 2 7
1960 Squaw Valley (host nation) 3 4 3 10
1964 Innsbruck 1 2 3 6
1968 Grenoble 1 5 1 7
1972 Sapporo 3 2 3 8
1976 Innsbruck 3 3 4 10
1980 Lake Placid (host nation) 6 4 2 12
1984 Sarajevo 4 4 0 8
1988 Calgary 2 1 3 6
1992 Albertville 5 4 2 11
1994 Lillehammer 6 5 2 13
1998 Nagano 6 3 4 13
2002 Salt Lake City (host nation) 10 13 11 34
2006 Turin 9 9 7 25
Total 78 80 58 216

Medals by summer sport[]

Athletics 306 229 183 718
Swimming 202 146 110 458
Wrestling 49 43 30 122
Diving 48 41 42 131
Shooting 48 27 22 97
Boxing 48 23 37 108
Rowing 30 30 21 81
Gymnastics 28 29 28 85
Sailing 18 22 17 57
Basketball 17 2 3 22
Weightlifting 16 16 11 43
Tennis 16 5 9 30
Archery 14 9 8 31
Cycling 13 14 18 45
Equestrian 10 19 17 46
Canoeing 5 5 6 16
Volleyball 5 2 3 10
Synchronized swimming 5 2 2 9
Golf 3 3 4 10
Softball 3 0 0 3
Football 2 2 1 5
Taekwondo 2 1 0 3
Rugby 2 0 0 2
Fencing 1 4 9 14
Water polo 1 4 5 10
Tug of war 1 1 1 3
Roque 1 1 1 3
Baseball 1 0 1 2
Jeu de paume 1 0 0 1
Modern pentathlon 0 6 3 9
Judo 0 3 6 9
Polo 0 1 1 2
Lacrosse 0 1 0 1
Field hockey 0 0 2 2
Triathlon 0 0 1 1
Total 896 691 602 2189

Medals by winter sport[]

Speed skating 28 20 15 63
Figure skating 13 15 16 44
Alpine skiing 12 15 4 31
Bobsleigh 6 6 6 18
Snowboarding 5 4 5 14
Freestyle skiing 4 4 2 10
Short track speed skating 4 3 5 12
Ice hockey 3 8 2 13
Skeleton 3 3 0 6
Luge 0 2 2 4
Cross-country skiing 0 1 0 1
Ski jumping 0 0 1 1
Curling 0 0 1 1
Total 78 81 59 218


Etymology[]

The term America, for the lands of the western hemisphere, was coined in 1507 after Amerigo Vespucci, an Italian explorer and cartographer.[6] The full name of the country was first used officially in the Declaration of Independence, which was the "unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America" adopted by the "Representatives of the united States of America" on July 4, 1776.[7] The current name was finalized on November 15, 1777, when the Second Continental Congress adopted the Articles of Confederation, the first of which states, "The Stile of this Confederacy shall be 'The United States of America.'" Common short forms and abbreviations of the United States of America include the United States, the U.S., the U.S.A., and America. Colloquial names for the country include the U.S. of A. and the States. Columbia, a once popular name for the Americas and the United States, was derived from Christopher Columbus. It appears in the name "District of Columbia". A female personification of Columbia appears on some official documents, including certain prints of U.S. currency.

The standard way to refer to a citizen of the United States is as an American. Though United States is the formal adjective, American and U.S. are the most common adjectives used to refer to the country ("American values," "U.S. forces"). American is rarely used in English to refer to people not connected to the United States.[8]

The phrase "the United States" was originally treated as plural—e.g, "the United States are"—including in the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1865. However, it became increasingly common to treat the name as singular—e.g., "the United States is"—after the end of the Civil War. The singular form is now standard, while the plural form is retained in the set idiom "these United States."[9]

Geography[]

Main article: Geography of the United States
USATopographicalMap

Topographic map of the contiguous United States

Climatemapusa2

Climate zones of the contiguous United States

The United States is situated almost entirely in the western hemisphere: the contiguous United States stretches from the Pacific on the west to the Atlantic on the east, with the Gulf of Mexico to the southeast, and bordered by Canada on the north and Mexico on the south. Alaska is the largest state in area; separated from the contiguous U.S. by Canada, it touches the Pacific on the south and Arctic Ocean on the north. Hawaii occupies an archipelago in the central Pacific, southwest of North America. The United States is the world's third or fourth largest nation by total area, before or after China. The ranking varies depending on (a) how two territories disputed by China and India are counted and (b) how the total size of the United States is calculated: the CIA World Factbook gives Template:Convert,[10] the United Nations Statistics Division gives Template:Convert,[11] and the Encyclopedia Britannica gives Template:Convert.[12] Including only land area, the United States is third in size behind Russia and China, just ahead of Canada.[13] The United States also possesses several insular territories scattered around the West Indies (e.g., the commonwealth of Puerto Rico) and the Pacific (e.g., Guam).

The coastal plain of the Atlantic seaboard gives way further inland to deciduous forests and the rolling hills of the Piedmont. The Appalachian Mountains divide the eastern seaboard from the Great Lakes and the grasslands of the Midwest. The MississippiMissouri River, the world's fourth longest river system, runs mainly north-south through the heart of the country. The flat, fertile prairie land of the Great Plains stretches to the west. The Rocky Mountains, at the western edge of the Great Plains, extend north to south across the continental United States, reaching altitudes higher than 14,000 feet (4,300 m) in Colorado.[14] The area to the west of the Rocky Mountains is dominated by the rocky Great Basin and deserts such as the Mojave. The Sierra Nevada range runs parallel to the Rockies, relatively close to the Pacific coast. At 20,320 feet (6,194 m), Alaska's Mount McKinley is the country's tallest peak. Active volcanoes are common throughout the Alexander and Aleutian Islands, and the entire state of Hawaii is built upon tropical volcanic islands. The supervolcano underlying Yellowstone National Park in the Rockies is the continent's largest volcanic feature.[15]

Because of the United States' large size and wide range of geographic features, nearly every type of climate is represented. The climate is temperate in most areas, tropical in Hawaii and southern Florida, polar in Alaska, semi-arid in the Great Plains west of the 100th meridian, desert in the Southwest, Mediterranean in Coastal California, and arid in the Great Basin. Extreme weather is not uncommon—the states bordering the Gulf of Mexico are prone to hurricanes, and most of the world's tornadoes occur within the continental United States, primarily in the Midwest's Tornado Alley.[16]

Environment[]

Haliaeetus leucocephalus2

The bald eagle has been the national bird of the United States since 1782

Main article: Environment of the United States

U.S. plant life is very diverse; the country has more than 17,000 identified native species of flora.[17] More than 400 mammal, 700 bird, 500 reptile and amphibian, and 90,000 insect species have been documented.[18] The Endangered Species Act of 1973 protects threatened and endangered species and their habitats, which are monitored by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The U.S. has fifty-eight national parks and hundreds of other federally managed parks, forests, and wilderness areas.[19] Altogether, the U.S. government regulates 28.8% of the country's total land area.[20] Most such public land comprises protected parks and forestland, though some federal land is leased for oil and gas drilling,[21] mining, or cattle ranching.

The energy policy of the United States is widely debated; many call on the country to take a leading role in fighting global warming.[22] The United States is currently the second largest emitter, after the People's Republic of China, of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.[23]

History[]

Main article: History of the United States

Native Americans and European settlers[]

Main article: Native Americans in the United States

The indigenous peoples of the U.S. mainland, including Alaska Natives, are thought to have migrated from Asia. They began arriving at least 12,000 and as many as 40,000 years ago.[24] Several indigenous communities in the pre-Columbian era developed advanced agriculture, grand architecture, and state-level societies. In 1492, Genoese explorer Christopher Columbus, under contract to the Spanish crown, reached several Caribbean islands, making first contact with the indigenous population. In the years that followed, the majority of the indigenous American peoples were killed by epidemics of Eurasian diseases.[25]

MayflowerHarbor

The Mayflower transported Pilgrims to the New World in 1620, as depicted in William Halsall's The Mayflower in Plymouth Harbor, 1882

On April 2, 1513, Spanish conquistador Juan Ponce de León landed on what he called "La Florida"—the first documented European arrival on what would become the U.S. mainland. Of the colonies Spain established in the region, only St. Augustine, founded in 1565, remains. Later Spanish settlements in the present-day southwestern United States drew thousands through Mexico. French fur traders established outposts of New France around the Great Lakes; France eventually claimed much of the North American interior as far south as the Gulf of Mexico. The first successful English settlements were the Virginia Colony in Jamestown in 1607 and the Pilgrims' Plymouth Colony in 1620. The 1628 chartering of the Massachusetts Bay Colony resulted in a wave of migration; by 1634, New England had been settled by some 10,000 Puritans. Between the late 1610s and the American Revolution, an estimated 50,000 convicts were shipped to England's, and later Great Britain's, American colonies.[26] Beginning in 1614, the Dutch established settlements along the lower Hudson River, including New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island. The small settlement of New Sweden, founded along the Delaware River in 1638, was taken over by the Dutch in 1655.

By 1674, English forces had won the former Dutch colonies in the Anglo-Dutch Wars; the province of New Netherland was renamed New York. Many new immigrants, especially to the South, were indentured servants—some two-thirds of all Virginia immigrants between 1630 and 1680.[27] By the turn of the century, African slaves were becoming the primary source of bonded labor. With the 1729 division of the Carolinas and the 1732 colonization of Georgia, the thirteen British colonies that would become the United States of America were established. All had active local and colonial governments with elections open to most free men, with a growing devotion to the ancient rights of Englishmen and a sense of self government that stimulated support for republicanism. All had legalized the African slave trade. With high birth rates, low death rates, and steady immigration, the colonies doubled in population every twenty-five years. The Christian revivalist movement of the 1730s and 1740s known as the Great Awakening fueled interest in both religion and religious liberty. In the French and Indian War, British forces seized Canada from the French, but the francophone population remained politically isolated from the southern colonies. By 1770, those thirteen colonies had an increasingly Anglicized population of three million, approximately half that of Britain. Though subject to British taxation, they were given no representation in the Parliament of Great Britain.

Independence and expansion[]

Main article: American Revolution
Declaration independence

Declaration of Independence, by John Trumbull, 1817–18

Tensions between American colonials and the British during the revolutionary period of the 1760s and early 1770s led to the American Revolutionary War, fought from 1775 through 1781. On June 14, 1775, the Continental Congress, convening in Philadelphia, established a Continental Army under the command of George Washington. Proclaiming that "all men are created equal" and endowed with "certain unalienable Rights," the Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The Declaration, drafted largely by Thomas Jefferson, pronounced the colonies sovereign "states." In 1777, the Articles of Confederation were adopted, uniting the states under a weak federal government that operated until 1788. Some 70,000–80,000 loyalists to the British Crown fled the rebellious states, many to Nova Scotia and the new British holdings in Canada.[28] Native Americans, with divided allegiances, fought on both sides of the war's western front.

After the defeat of the British army by American forces who were assisted by the French, Great Britain recognized the sovereignty of the thirteen states in 1783. A constitutional convention was organized in 1787 by those who wished to establish a strong national government with power over the states. By June 1788, nine states had ratified the United States Constitution, sufficient to establish the new government; the republic's first Senate, House of Representatives, and president—George Washington—took office in 1789. New York City was the federal capital for a year, before the government relocated to Philadelphia. In 1791, the states ratified the Bill of Rights, ten amendments to the Constitution forbidding federal restriction of personal freedoms and guaranteeing a range of legal protections. Attitudes toward slavery were shifting; a clause in the Constitution protected the African slave trade only until 1808. The Northern states abolished slavery between 1780 and 1804, leaving the slave states of the South as defenders of the "peculiar institution." In 1800, the federal government moved to the newly founded Washington, D.C. The Second Great Awakening made evangelicalism a force behind various social reform movements.

U.S

Territorial acquisitions by date

Americans' eagerness to expand westward began a cycle of Indian Wars that stretched to the end of the nineteenth century, as Native Americans were stripped of their land. The Louisiana Purchase of French-claimed territory under President Thomas Jefferson in 1803 virtually doubled the nation's size. The War of 1812, declared against Britain over various grievances and fought to a draw, strengthened American nationalism. A series of U.S. military incursions into Florida led Spain to cede it and other Gulf Coast territory in 1819. The country annexed the Republic of Texas in 1845. The concept of Manifest Destiny was popularized during this time.[29] The 1846 Oregon Treaty with Britain led to U.S. control of the present-day American Northwest. The U.S. victory in the Mexican-American War resulted in the 1848 cession of California and much of the present-day American Southwest. The California Gold Rush of 1848–49 further spurred western migration. New railways made relocation much less arduous for settlers and increased conflicts with Native Americans. Over a half-century, up to 40 million American bison, commonly called buffalo, were slaughtered for skins and meat and to ease the railways' spread. The loss of the bison, a primary economic resource for the plains Indians, was an existential blow to many native cultures.


Government and elections[]

Main article: Federal government of the United States
USCapitol

The west front of the United States Capitol, which houses the United States Congress

The United States is the world's oldest surviving federation. It is a constitutional republic, "in which majority rule is tempered by minority rights protected by law."[30] It is fundamentally structured as a representative democracy, though U.S. citizens residing in the territories are excluded from voting for federal officials.[31] The government is regulated by a system of checks and balances defined by the United States Constitution, which serves as the country's supreme legal document and as a social contract for the people of the United States. In the American federalist system, citizens are usually subject to three levels of government, federal, state, and local; the local government's duties are commonly split between county and municipal governments. In almost all cases, executive and legislative officials are elected by a plurality vote of citizens by district. There is no proportional representation at the federal level, and it is very rare at lower levels. Federal and state judicial and cabinet officials are typically nominated by the executive branch and approved by the legislature, although some state judges and officials are elected by popular vote.

HobanNorthPortico

The North Portico of the White House, home and work place of the U.S. president

The federal government is composed of three branches:

  • Legislative: The bicameral Congress, made up of the Senate and the House of Representatives makes federal law, declares war, approves treaties, has the power of the purse, and has the power of impeachment, by which it can remove sitting members of the government.
  • Executive: The president is the commander-in-chief of the military, can veto legislative bills before they become law, and appoints the Cabinet and other officers, who administer and enforce federal laws and policies.
  • Judicial: The Supreme Court and lower federal courts, whose judges are appointed by the president with Senate approval, interpret laws and can overturn laws they deem unconstitutional.

The House of Representatives has 435 members, each representing a congressional district for a two-year term. House seats are apportioned among the fifty states by population every tenth year. As of the 2000 census, seven states have the minimum of one representative, while California, the most populous state, has fifty-three. Each state has two senators, elected at-large to six-year terms; one third of Senate seats are up for election every second year. The president serves a four-year term and may be elected to the office no more than twice. The president is not elected by direct vote, but by an indirect electoral college system in which the determining votes are apportioned by state. The Supreme Court, led by the Chief Justice of the United States, has nine members, who serve for life.

Supreme Court Front Dusk

The front of the United States Supreme Court building

All laws and procedures of both state and federal governments are subject to review, and any law ruled in violation of the Constitution by the judicial branch is overturned. The original text of the Constitution establishes the structure and responsibilities of the federal government, the relationship between it and the individual states, and essential matters of military and economic authority. Article One protects the right to the "great writ" of habeas corpus, and Article Three guarantees the right to a jury trial in all criminal cases. Amendments to the Constitution require the approval of three-fourths of the states. The Constitution has been amended twenty-seven times; the first ten amendments, which make up the Bill of Rights, and the Fourteenth Amendment form the central basis of individual rights in the United States.

Parties and politics[]

Main article: Politics of the United States

Politics in the United States have operated under a two-party system for virtually all of the country's history. For elective offices at all levels, state-administered primary elections are held to choose the major party nominees for subsequent general elections. Since the general election of 1856, the two dominant parties have been the Democratic Party, founded in 1824 (though its roots trace back to 1792), and the Republican Party, founded in 1854. Since the Civil War, only one third-party presidential candidate—former president Theodore Roosevelt, running as a Progressive in 1912—has won as much as 20% of the popular vote.

The incumbent president, Republican George W. Bush, is the 43rd president in the country's history. All U.S. presidents to date have been white men. If Democrat Barack Obama wins the forthcoming presidential election, he will become the first African-American president. Following the 2006 midterm elections, the Democratic Party controls both the House and the Senate. Every member of the U.S. Congress is a Democrat or a Republican except two independent members of the Senate—one a former Democratic incumbent, the other a self-described socialist. An overwhelming majority of state and local officials are also either Democrats or Republicans.

Within American political culture, the Republican Party is considered "center-right" or conservative and the Democratic Party is considered "center-left" or liberal, but members of both parties have a wide range of views. In a May 2008 poll, 44% of Americans described themselves as "conservative," 27% as "moderate," and 21% as "liberal."[32] On the other hand, that same month a plurality of adults, 41.7%, identified as Democrats, 31.6% as Republicans, and 26.6% as independents.[33] The states of the Northeast and West Coast and some of the Great Lakes states are relatively liberal-leaning—they are known in political parlance as "blue states." The "red states" of the South and the Rocky Mountains lean conservative.

States[]

Main article: U.S. state

The United States is a federal union of fifty states. The original thirteen states were the successors of the thirteen colonies that rebelled against British rule. Most of the rest have been carved from territory obtained through war or purchase by the U.S. government. The exceptions are Vermont, Texas, and Hawaii; each was an independent republic before joining the union. Early in the country's history, three states were created out of the territory of existing ones: Kentucky from Virginia; Tennessee from North Carolina; and Maine from Massachusetts. West Virginia broke away from Virginia during the American Civil War. The most recent state—Hawaii—achieved statehood on August 21, 1959. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the states do not have the right to secede from the union.

The states compose the vast bulk of the U.S. land mass; the only other areas considered integral parts of the country are the District of Columbia, the federal district where the capital, Washington, is located; and Palmyra Atoll, an uninhabited but incorporated territory in the Pacific Ocean. The United States possesses five major territories with indigenous populations: Puerto Rico and the United States Virgin Islands in the Caribbean; and American Samoa, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands in the Pacific. Those born in the territories (except for American Samoa) possess U.S. citizenship.

Template:USA midsize imagemap with state names

Foreign relations and military[]

Main article: Foreign relations of the United States
Bush Brown

President George W. Bush (right) with UK prime minister Gordon Brown

The United States has vast economic, political, and military influence on a global scale, which makes its foreign policy a subject of great interest around the world. Almost all countries have embassies in Washington, D.C., and many host consulates around the country. Likewise, nearly all nations host American diplomatic missions. However, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Bhutan, Sudan, and the Republic of China (Taiwan) do not have formal diplomatic relations with the United States.

American isolationists have often been at odds with internationalists, as anti-imperialists have been with promoters of Manifest Destiny and American Empire. American imperialism in the Philippines drew sharp rebukes from Mark Twain, philosopher William James, and many others. Later, President Woodrow Wilson played a key role in creating the League of Nations, but the Senate prohibited American membership in it. Isolationism became a thing of the past when the United States took a lead role in founding the United Nations, becoming a permanent member of the Security Council and host to the United Nations Headquarters. The United States enjoys a special relationship with the United Kingdom and strong ties with Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Israel, and fellow NATO members. It also works closely with its neighbors through the Organization of American States and free trade agreements such as the trilateral North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico. In 2005, the United States spent $27.3 billion on official development assistance, the most in the world; however, as a share of gross national income (GNI), the U.S. contribution of 0.22% ranked twentieth of twenty-two donor states. On the other hand, nongovernmental sources such as private foundations, corporations, and educational and religious institutions donated $95.5 billion. The total of $122.8 billion is again the most in the world and seventh in terms of GNI percentage.[34]

USSRONALDREAGANgoodshot

The USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier

The president holds the title of commander-in-chief of the nation's armed forces and appoints its leaders, the secretary of defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The United States Department of Defense administers the armed forces, including the Army, the Navy, the Marine Corps, and the Air Force. The Coast Guard falls under the jurisdiction of the Department of Homeland Security in peacetime and the Department of the Navy in times of war. In 2005, the military had 1.38 million personnel on active duty,[35] along with several hundred thousand each in the Reserves and the National Guard for a total of 2.3 million troops. The Department of Defense also employs approximately 700,000 civilians, disregarding contractors. Military service is voluntary, though conscription may occur in wartime through the Selective Service System. The rapid deployment of American forces is facilitated by the Air Force's large fleet of transportation aircraft and aerial refueling tankers, the Navy's fleet of eleven active aircraft carriers, and Marine Expeditionary Units at sea in the Navy's Atlantic and Pacific fleets. Outside of the American homeland, the U.S. military is deployed to 770 bases and facilities, on every continent except Antarctica.[36] Because of the extent of its global military presence, scholars describe the United States as maintaining an "empire of bases."[37]

Total U.S. military spending in 2006, over $528 billion, was 46% of the entire military spending in the world and greater than the next fourteen largest national military expenditures combined. (In purchasing power parity terms, it was larger than the next six such expenditures combined.) The per capita spending of $1,756 was approximately ten times the world average.[38] At 4.06% of GDP, U.S. military spending is ranked 27th out of 172 nations.[39] The proposed base Department of Defense budget for 2009, $515.4 billion, is a 7% increase over 2008 and a nearly 74% increase over 2001.[40] The estimated total cost of the Iraq War to the United States through 2016 is $2.267 trillion.[41] As of June 6, 2008, the United States had suffered 4,092 military fatalities during the war and nearly 30,000 wounded.[42]

Economy[]

Main article: Economy of the United States
National economic indicators
Unemployment 5.5%May 2008[43]
GDP growth 0.9%1Q 2008[44] (2.2%2007[10])
CPI inflation 3.9%April 2007–April 2008[45]
National debt $9.407 trillionJune 5, 2008[46]
Poverty 12.3% or 13.3%2006[47][48]

The United States has a capitalist mixed economy, which is fueled by abundant natural resources, a well-developed infrastructure, and high productivity. According to the International Monetary Fund, the United States GDP of more than $13 trillion constitutes over 25.5% of the gross world product at market exchange rates and over 19% of the gross world product at purchasing power parity (PPP).[2] The largest national GDP in the world, it was slightly less than the combined GDP of the European Union at PPP in 2006.[49] The country ranks eighth in the world in nominal GDP per capita and fourth in GDP per capita at PPP.[2] The United States is the largest importer of goods and third largest exporter, though exports per capita are relatively low. Canada, China, Mexico, Japan, and Germany are its top trading partners.[50] The leading export commodity is electrical machinery, while vehicles constitute the leading import.[51]

The private sector constitutes the bulk of the economy, with government activity accounting for 12.4% of GDP. The economy is postindustrial, with the service sector contributing 67.8% of GDP.[52] The leading business field by gross business receipts is wholesale and retail trade; by net income it is finance and insurance.[53] The United States remains an industrial power, with chemical products the leading manufacturing field.[54] The United States is the third largest producer of oil in the world.[55] It is the world's number one producer of electrical and nuclear energy, as well as liquid natural gas, sulfur, phosphates, and salt. While agriculture accounts for just under 1% of GDP,[52] the United States is the world's top producer of corn[56] and soybeans.[57] The country's leading cash crop is marijuana, despite federal laws making its cultivation and sale illegal.[58] The New York Stock Exchange is the world's largest by dollar volume.[59] Coca-Cola and McDonald's are the two most recognized brands in the world.[60]

Photos NewYork1 032

Wall Street is home to the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE)

In 2005, 155 million persons were employed with earnings, of whom 80% worked in full-time jobs.[61] The majority, 79%, were employed in the service sector.[10] With approximately 15.5 million people, health care and social assistance is the leading field of employment.[62] About 12% of American workers are unionized, compared to 30% in Western Europe.[63] The U.S. ranks number one in the ease of hiring and firing workers, according to the World Bank.[64] Between 1973 and 2003, a year's work for the average American grew by 199 hours.[65] Partly as a result, the United States maintains the highest labor productivity in the world. However, it no longer leads the world in productivity per hour as it did from the 1950s through the early 1990s; workers in Norway, France, Belgium, and Luxembourg are now more productive per hour.[66] The United States ranks third in the World Bank's Ease of Doing Business Index.[64] Compared to Europe, U.S. property and corporate income taxes are generally higher, while labor and, particularly, consumption taxes are lower.[67]

Income and human development[]

Main article: Income in the United States
Income gains

Inflation adjusted percentage increase in after-tax household income for the top 1% and four quintiles, between 1979 and 2005 (gains by top 1% are reflected by bottom bar; bottom quintile by top bar)[68]

According to the Census Bureau, the pretax median household income in 2006 was $48,201.[47] The two-year average ranged from $66,752 in New Jersey to $34,343 in Mississippi.[69] Using purchasing power parity exchange rates, these income levels are similar to those found in other postindustrial nations. Depending on the method of analysis, 12.3% or 13.3% of Americans were below the federally designated poverty line.[47][48] The number of poor Americans, at least 36.5 million, was actually 3.5 million more than in 2001, the bottom year of the most recent U.S. recession.[47][70] Spending on the social safety net is relatively low: the United States redistributes between 8 and 9% of GDP through social protection programs, slightly under the Japanese rate and less than half the estimated 19% of the European Union.[71] The United States was ranked twelfth in the world in the UNDP's 2008 Human Development Report.[72] A 2007 UNICEF study of children's well-being in twenty-one industrialized nations, covering a broad range of factors, ranked the U.S. next to last.[73]

Between 1967 and 2006, median household income rose 30.8% in constant dollars, largely because of the growing number of dual-earner households.[47] Though the standard of living has improved for nearly all classes since the late 1970s,[74] income inequality has grown substantially.[75] The share of income received by the top 1% has risen considerably while the share of income of the bottom 90% has fallen, with the gap between the two groups being roughly as large in 2005 as in 1928.[76] According to the standard Gini index, income inequality in the United States is higher than in any European nation.[77] Some economists, such as Alan Greenspan, see rising income inequality as a cause for concern.[78] Wealth is highly concentrated: The richest 10% of the adult population possesses 69.8% of the country's household wealth, the second-highest share of any democratic developed nation.[79] The top 1% possesses 33.4% of net wealth.[80]

Science and technology[]

Main article: Science and technology in the United States
Buzz salutes the U.S

Astronaut Buzz Aldrin during the first human landing on the Moon, 1969

The United States has been a leader in scientific research and technological innovation since the late nineteenth century. In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell was awarded the first U.S. patent for the telephone. The laboratory of Thomas Edison developed the phonograph, the first long-lasting light bulb, and the first viable movie camera. In the early twentieth century, the automobile companies of Ransom E. Olds and Henry Ford pioneered assembly line manufacturing. The Wright brothers, in 1903, made what is recognized as the "first sustained and controlled heavier-than-air powered flight."[81] The rise of Nazism in the 1930s led many important European scientists, including Albert Einstein and Enrico Fermi, to immigrate to the United States. During World War II, the U.S.-based Manhattan Project developed nuclear weapons, ushering in the Atomic Age. The Space Race produced rapid advances in rocketry, materials science, and computers. The United States largely developed the ARPANET and its successor, the Internet. Today, the bulk of research and development funding, 64%, comes from the private sector.[82] The United States leads the world in scientific research papers and impact factor.[83] Americans enjoy high levels of access to technological consumer goods.[84] Almost half of U.S. households have broadband Internet service.[85] The country is the primary developer and grower of genetically modified food; more than half of the world's land planted with biotech crops is in the United States.[86]

Transportation[]

Main article: Transportation in the United States
I-80 Eastshore Fwy

Interstate 80, the second-longest U.S. Interstate highway, runs from California to New Jersey

As of 2003, there were 759 automobiles per 1,000 Americans, compared to 472 per 1,000 inhabitants of the European Union the following year.[87] Approximately 39% of personal vehicles are vans, SUVs, or light trucks.[88] The average American adult (accounting for all drivers and nondrivers) spends 55 minutes behind the wheel every day, driving Template:Convert.[89] The U.S. intercity passenger rail system is relatively weak.[90] Only 9% of total U.S. work trips employ mass transit, compared to 38.8% in Europe.[91] Bicycle usage is minimal, well below European levels.[92] The civil airline industry is entirely privatized, while most major airports are publicly owned. The five largest airlines in the world by passengers carried are all American; American Airlines is number one.[93] Of the world's thirty busiest passenger airports, sixteen are in the United States, including the busiest, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL).[94]

Energy[]

Main article: Energy use in the United States

The United States energy market is 29,000 terawatt hours per year. Energy consumption per capita is 7.8 tons of oil equivalent per year, compared to Germany's 4.2 tons and Canada's 8.3 tons. In 2005, 40% of the nation's energy came from petroleum, 23% from coal, and 22% from natural gas. The remainder was supplied by nuclear power and various renewable energy sources.[95] The United States is the world's largest consumer of petroleum.[96] For decades, nuclear power has played a limited role relative to many other developed countries. Recently, applications for new nuclear plants have been filed.[97]

Demographics[]

Main article: Demographics of the United States
Census-2000-Data-Top-US-Ancestries-by-County

Largest ancestry groups by county, 2000

On October 17, 2006, the United States population was estimated by the U.S. Census Bureau to be 300,000,000.[98] The U.S. population included an estimated 12 million unauthorized migrants,[99] of whom an estimated 1 million were uncounted by the Census Bureau.[100] The overall growth rate is 0.89%,[10] compared to 0.16% in the European Union.[101] The birth rate of 14.16 per 1,000 is 30% below the world average, while higher than any European country except for Albania and Ireland.[102] In 2006, 1.27 million immigrants were granted legal residence. Mexico has been the leading source of new U.S. residents for over two decades; since 1998, China, India, and the Philippines have been in the top four sending countries every year.[103] The United States is the only industrialized nation in which large population increases are projected.[104]

The United States has a very diverse population—thirty-one ancestry groups have more than a million members.[105] Whites are the largest racial group, with German Americans, Irish Americans, and English Americans constituting three of the country's four largest ancestry groups.[105] African Americans constitute the nation's largest racial minority and third largest ancestry group.[106][105] Asian Americans are the country's second largest racial minority; the two largest Asian American ancestry groups are Chinese and Filipino.[105] In 2006, the U.S. population included an estimated 4.5 million people with some American Indian or Alaskan native ancestry (2.9 million exclusively of such ancestry) and over 1 million with some native Hawaiian or Pacific island ancestry (0.5 million exclusively).[106][107]

Race/Ethnicity (2006)[106]
White 80.1%
African American 12.8%
Asian 4.4%
Native American and Alaskan Native 1.0%
Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander 0.2%
Multiracial 1.6%
Hispanic or Latino (of any race) 14.8%

Hispanic American population growth is a major demographic trend. The approximately 44 million Americans of Hispanic descent constitute the largest ethnic minority in the country. About 64% of Hispanic Americans are of Mexican descent.[108] Between 2000 and 2006, the country's Hispanic population increased 25.5% while the non-Hispanic population rose just 3.5%.[106] Much of this growth is from immigration; as of 2004, 12% of the U.S. population was foreign-born, over half that number from Latin America.[109] Fertility is also a factor; the average Hispanic woman gives birth to three children in her lifetime. The comparable fertility rate is 2.2 for non-Hispanic black women and 1.8 for non-Hispanic white women (below the replacement rate of 2.1).[104] Hispanics accounted for nearly half of the national population growth of 2.9 million between July 2005 and July 2006.[110] It is estimated on the basis of current trends that by 2050 whites of non-Hispanic origin will be 50.1% of the U.S. population, compared to 69.4% in 2000 (66.4% in 2006).[111][106] They are currently less than half the population in four "minority-majority states"—California,[112] New Mexico,[113] Hawaii,[114] and Texas[115]—as well as the District of Columbia.[116]

About 83% of the population lives in one of the country's 363 metropolitan areas.[117] In 2006, 254 incorporated places in the United States had populations over 100,000, nine cities had more than 1 million residents, and four global cities had over 2 million (New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston).[118] The United States has fifty metropolitan areas with populations greater than 1 million.[119] Of the fifty fastest-growing metro areas, twenty-three are in the West and twenty-five in the South. Among the country's twenty most populous metro areas, those of Dallas (the fourth largest), Houston (sixth), and Atlanta (ninth) saw the largest numerical gains between 2000 and 2006, while that of Phoenix (thirteenth) grew the largest in percentage terms.[117]

Template:Largest cities of the United States Template:-

Language[]

Main article: Languages of the United States
Languages (2003)[120]
English (only) 214.8 million
Spanish, incl. Creole 29.7 million
Chinese 2.2 million
French, incl. Creole 1.9 million
Tagalog 1.3 million
Vietnamese 1.1 million
German 1.1 million

English is the de facto national language. Although there is no official language at the federal level, some laws—such as U.S. naturalization requirements—standardize English. In 2003, about 215 million, or 82% of the population aged five years and older, spoke only English at home. Spanish, spoken by over 10% of the population at home, is the second most common language and the most widely taught foreign language.[120][121] Some Americans advocate making English the country's official language, as it is in at least twenty-eight states.[122] Both Hawaiian and English are official languages in Hawaii by state law.[123] While neither has an official language, New Mexico has laws providing for the use of both English and Spanish, as Louisiana does for English and French.[124] Other states, such as California, mandate the publication of Spanish versions of certain government documents including court forms.[125] Several insular territories grant official recognition to their native languages, along with English: Samoan and Chamorro are recognized by Samoa and Guam, respectively; Carolinian and Chamorro are recognized by the Northern Mariana Islands; Spanish is an official language of Puerto Rico.

Religion[]

Main article: Religion in the United States
Pisgah

A church in the largely Protestant Bible Belt

The United States government does not audit Americans' religious beliefs.[126] In a private survey conducted in 2001, 76.5% of American adults identified themselves as Christian, down from 86.4% in 1990. Protestant denominations accounted for 52% of adult Americans, while Roman Catholics, at 24.5%, were the largest individual denomination.[127] A different study describes white evangelicals, 26.3% of the population, as the country's largest religious cohort;[128] evangelicals of all races are estimated at 30–35%.[129] The total reporting non-Christian religions in 2001 was 3.7%, up from 3.3% in 1990. The leading non-Christian faiths were Judaism (1.4%), Islam (0.5%), Buddhism (0.5%), Hinduism (0.4%), and Unitarian Universalism (0.3%). Between 1990 and 2001, the number of Muslims and Buddhists more than doubled. From 8.2% in 1990, 14.1% in 2001 described themselves as agnostic, atheist, or simply having no religion,[127] still significantly less than in other postindustrial countries such as Britain (2005:44%) and Sweden (2001:69%, 2005:85%).[130]

Education[]

Main article: Education in the United States
RotundaII

The University of Virginia, designed by Thomas Jefferson, is one of 19 American UNESCO World Heritage Sites

American public education is operated by state and local governments, regulated by the United States Department of Education through restrictions on federal grants. Children are required in most states to attend school from the age of six or seven (generally, kindergarten or first grade) until they turn eighteen (generally bringing them through 12th grade, the end of high school); some states allow students to leave school at sixteen or seventeen.[131] About 12% of children are enrolled in parochial or nonsectarian private schools. Just over 2% of children are homeschooled.[132] The United States has many competitive private and public institutions of higher education, as well as local community colleges of varying quality with open admission policies. Of Americans twenty-five and older, 84.6% graduated from high school, 52.6% attended some college, 27.2% earned a bachelor's degree, and 9.6% earned graduate degrees.[133] The basic literacy rate is approximately 99%.[10][134] The United Nations assigns the United States an Education Index of 0.97, tying it for twelfth-best in the world.[135]

Health[]

Main article: Health care in the United States

The American life expectancy of 77.8 years at birth[136] is a year shorter than the overall figure in Western Europe, and three to four years lower than that of Norway, Switzerland, and Canada.[137] Over the past two decades, the country's rank in life expectancy has dropped from 11th to 42nd place in the world.[138] The infant mortality rate of 6.37 per thousand likewise places the United States 42nd out of 221 countries, behind all of Western Europe.[139] U.S. cancer survival rates are the highest in the world.[140] Approximately one-third of the adult population is obese and an additional third is overweight;[141] the obesity rate, the highest in the industrialized world, has more than doubled in the last quarter-century.[142] Obesity-related type 2 diabetes is considered epidemic by healthcare professionals.[143] The U.S. adolescent pregnancy rate, 79.8 per 1,000 women, is nearly four times that of France and five times that of Germany.[144] Abortion in the United States, legal on demand, is a source of great political controversy. Many states ban public funding of the procedure and have laws to restrict late-term abortions, require parental notification for minors, and mandate a waiting period prior to treatment. While the incidence of abortion is in decline, the U.S. abortion ratio of 241 per 1,000 live births and abortion rate of 15 per 1,000 women aged 15–44 remain higher than those of most Western nations.[145]

The United States healthcare system far outspends any other nation's, measured in both per capita spending and percentage of GDP.[146] Unlike most developed countries, the U.S. healthcare system is not universal, and relies on a higher proportion of private funding. In 2004, private insurance paid for 36% of personal health expenditure, private out-of-pocket payments covered 15%, and federal, state, and local governments paid for 44%.[147] The World Health Organization ranked the U.S. healthcare system in 2000 as first in responsiveness, but 37th in overall performance. The United States is a leader in medical innovation. In 2004, the U.S. nonindustrial sector spent three times as much as Europe per capita on biomedical research.[148] Medical bills are the most common reason for personal bankruptcy in the United States.[149] In 2005, 46.6 million Americans, or 15.9% of the population, were uninsured, 5.4 million more than in 2001. The primary cause of the decline in coverage is the drop in the number of Americans with employer-sponsored health insurance, which fell from 62.6% in 2001 to 59.5% in 2005.[70] Approximately one third of the uninsured lived in households with annual incomes greater than $50,000, with half of those having an income over $75,000.[150] Another third were eligible but not registered for public health insurance.[151] In 2006, Massachusetts became the first state to mandate health insurance;[152] California is considering similar legislation.[153]

Crime and punishment[]

Main article: Policing in the United States
Homicide rate by country

Homicide rates in selected countries, 2004

Law enforcement in the United States is primarily the responsibility of local police and sheriff's departments, with state police providing broader services. Federal agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the U.S. Marshals Service have specialized duties. At the federal level and in almost every state, jurisprudence operates on a common law system. State courts conduct most criminal trials; federal courts handle certain designated crimes as well as appeals from state systems.

Among developed nations, the United States has above-average levels of violent crime and particularly high levels of gun violence and homicide.[154] In 2006, there were 5.7 murders per 100,000 persons,[155] three times the rate in neighboring Canada.[156] The U.S. homicide rate, which decreased by 42% between 1991 and 1999, has been roughly steady since.[155] Some scholars have associated the high rate of homicide with the country's high rates of gun ownership, in turn associated with U.S. gun laws which are very permissive compared to those of other developed countries.[157]

The United States has the highest documented incarceration rate[158] and total prison population[159] in the world and by far the highest figures among democratic, developed nations. At the start of 2008, more than 2.3 million people were held in American prisons or jails, more than one in every 100 adults.[160] The current rate is almost seven times the 1980 figure.[161] African American males are jailed at over six times the rate of white males and three times the rate of Hispanic males.[158] In the latest comparable data, from 2006, the U.S. incarceration rate was more than three times the figure in Poland, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) country with the next highest rate.[162] The country's extraordinary rate of incarceration is largely caused by changes in sentencing and drug policies.[158][163] Though it has been abolished in most Western nations, capital punishment is sanctioned in the United States for certain federal and military crimes, and in thirty-seven states. Since 1976, when the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty after a four-year moratorium, there have been over 1,000 executions in the United States.[164] In 2006, the country had the sixth highest number of executions in the world, following China, Iran, Pakistan, Iraq, and Sudan.[165] In December 2007, New Jersey became the first state to abolish the death penalty since the 1976 Supreme Court decision.

Culture[]

Main article: Culture of the United States

The United States is a multicultural nation, home to a wide variety of ethnic groups, traditions, and values.[1][166] There is no "American" ethnicity; aside from the now relatively small Native American population, nearly all Americans or their ancestors immigrated within the past five centuries.[167] The culture held in common by the majority of Americans is referred to as mainstream American culture, a Western culture largely derived from the traditions of Western European migrants, beginning with the early English and Dutch settlers. German, Irish, and Scottish cultures have also been very influential.[1] Certain cultural attributes of Mandé and Wolof slaves from West Africa were adopted by the American mainstream; based more on the traditions of Central African Bantu slaves, a distinct African American culture developed that would eventually have a major effect on the mainstream as well.[168] Westward expansion integrated the Creoles and Cajuns of Louisiana and the Hispanos of the Southwest and brought close contact with the culture of Mexico. Large-scale immigration in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries from Southern and Eastern Europe introduced many new cultural elements. More recent immigration from Asia and especially Latin America has had broad impact. The resulting mix of cultures may be characterized as a homogeneous melting pot or as a pluralistic salad bowl in which immigrants and their descendants retain distinctive cultural characteristics.[1]

While American culture maintains that the United States is a classless society,[169] economists and sociologists have identified cultural differences between the country's social classes, affecting socialization, language, and values.[170] The American middle and professional class has been the source of many contemporary social trends such as feminism, environmentalism, and multiculturalism.[171] Americans' self-images, social viewpoints, and cultural expectations are associated with their occupations to an unusually close degree.[172] While Americans tend to greatly value socioeconomic achievement, being ordinary or average is generally seen as a positive attribute.[173] Though the American Dream, or the perception that Americans enjoy high social mobility, played a key role in attracting immigrants, particularly in the late 1800s,[174] some analysts find that the United States has less social mobility than Western Europe and Canada.[175]

Women, formerly limited to domestic roles, now mostly work outside the home and receive a majority of bachelor's degrees.[176] The changing role of women has also changed the American family. In 2005, no household arrangement defined more than 30% of households; married childless couples were most common, at 28%.[177] The extension of marital rights to homosexual persons is an issue of debate; several more liberal states permit civil unions in lieu of marriage. In 2003, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that state's ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional;[178] the Supreme Court of California ruled similarly in 2008. Forty-three states still legally restrict marriage to the traditional man-and-woman model.[179]

Popular media[]

Main article: Cinema of the United States
PB050006

The famous Hollywood sign

In 1878, Eadweard Muybridge demonstrated the power of photography to capture motion. In 1894, the world's first commercial motion picture exhibition was given in New York City, using Thomas Edison's Kinetoscope. The next year saw the first commercial screening of a projected film, also in New York, and the United States was in the forefront of sound film's development in the following decades. Since the early twentieth century, the U.S. film industry has largely been based in and around Hollywood, California. Director D. W. Griffith was central to the development of film grammar and Orson Welles's Citizen Kane (1941) is frequently cited in critics' polls as the greatest film of all time.[180] American screen actors like John Wayne and Marilyn Monroe have become iconic figures, while producer/entrepreneur Walt Disney was a leader in both animated film and movie merchandising. The major film studios of Hollywood are the primary source of the most commercially successful movies in the world, such as Star Wars (1977) and Titanic (1997), and the products of Hollywood today dominate the global film industry.[181]

Americans are the heaviest television viewers in the world,[182] and the average time spent in front of the screen continues to rise, hitting five hours a day in 2006.[183] The four major broadcast networks are all commercial entities. Americans listen to radio programming, also largely commercialized, on average just over two-and-a-half hours a day.[184] Aside from web portals and web search engines, the most popular websites are eBay, MySpace, Amazon.com, The New York Times, and Apple.[185] Twelve million Americans keep a blog.[186]

The rhythmic and lyrical styles of African American music have deeply influenced American music at large, distinguishing it from European traditions. Elements from folk idioms such as the blues and what is now known as old-time music were adopted and transformed into popular genres with global audiences. Jazz was developed by innovators such as Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington early in the twentieth century. Country music, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll emerged between the 1920s and 1950s. In the 1960s, Bob Dylan emerged from the folk revival to become one of America's greatest songwriters and James Brown led the development of funk. More recent American creations include hip hop and house music. American pop stars such as Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, and Madonna have become global celebrities.

Literature, philosophy, and the arts[]

Main article: American literature
Mountrushmore

Mount Rushmore, a massive sculpture of four prominent American presidents

In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, American art and literature took most of its cues from Europe. Writers such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, and Henry David Thoreau established a distinctive American literary voice by the middle of the nineteenth century. Mark Twain and poet Walt Whitman were major figures in the century's second half; Emily Dickinson, virtually unknown during her lifetime, is recognized as another essential American poet. Eleven U.S. citizens have won the Nobel Prize in Literature, most recently Toni Morrison in 1993. Ernest Hemingway, the 1954 Nobel laureate, is often named as one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century.[187] A work seen as capturing fundamental aspects of the national experience and character—such as Herman Melville's Moby-Dick (1851), Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), and F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (1925)—may be dubbed the "Great American Novel." Popular literary genres such as the Western and hardboiled crime fiction developed in the United States.

The transcendentalists, led by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Thoreau, established the first major American philosophical movement. After the Civil War, Charles Peirce and then William James and John Dewey were leaders in the development of pragmatism. In the twentieth century, the work of W. V. Quine and Richard Rorty helped bring analytic philosophy to the fore in U.S. academic circles.

In the visual arts, the Hudson River School was an important mid-nineteenth-century movement in the tradition of European naturalism. The 1913 Armory Show in New York City, an exhibition of European modernist art, shocked the public and transformed the U.S. art scene.[188] Georgia O'Keeffe, Marsden Hartley, and others experimented with new styles, displaying a highly individualistic sensibility. Major artistic movements such as the abstract expressionism of Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning and the pop art of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein have developed largely in the United States. The tide of modernism and then postmodernism has also brought American architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Philip Johnson, and Frank Gehry to the top of their field.

One of the first notable promoters of the nascent American theater was impresario P. T. Barnum, who began operating a lower Manhattan entertainment complex in 1841. The team of Harrigan and Hart produced a series of popular musical comedies in New York starting in the late 1870s. In the twentieth century, the modern musical form emerged on Broadway; the songs of musical theater composers such as Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, and Stephen Sondheim have become pop standards. Playwright Eugene O'Neill won the Nobel literature prize in 1936; other acclaimed U.S. dramatists include multiple Pulitzer Prize winners Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, and August Wilson.

Though largely overlooked at the time, Charles Ives's work of the 1910s established him as the first major U.S. composer in the classical tradition; other experimentalists such as Henry Cowell and John Cage created an identifiably American approach to classical composition. Aaron Copland and George Gershwin developed a unique American synthesis of popular and classical music. Choreographers Isadora Duncan and Martha Graham were central figures in the creation of modern dance; George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins were leaders in twentieth-century ballet. The United States has long been at the fore in the relatively modern artistic medium of photography, with major practitioners such as Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, Ansel Adams, and many others. The newspaper comic strip and the comic book are both U.S. innovations. Superman, the quintessential comic book superhero, has become an American icon.

Food[]

Main article: Cuisine of the United States
Motherhood and apple pie

American cultural icons: apple pie, baseball, and the American flag

Mainstream American culinary arts are similar to those in other Western countries. Wheat is the primary cereal grain. Traditional American cuisine uses ingredients such as turkey, white-tailed deer venison, potatoes, sweet potatoes, corn, squash, and maple syrup, indigenous foods employed by Native Americans and early European settlers. Slow-cooked pork and beef barbecue, crab cakes, potato chips, and chocolate chip cookies are distinctively American styles. Soul food, developed by African slaves, is popular around the South and among many African Americans elsewhere. Syncretic cuisines such as Louisiana creole, Cajun, and Tex-Mex are regionally important. Characteristic dishes such as apple pie, fried chicken, pizza, hamburgers, and hot dogs derive from the recipes of various immigrants. French fries, Mexican dishes such as burritos and tacos, and pasta dishes freely adapted from Italian sources are widely consumed.[189] Americans generally prefer coffee to tea. Marketing by U.S. industries is largely responsible for making orange juice and milk ubiquitous breakfast beverages.[190] During the 1980s and 1990s, Americans' caloric intake rose 24%;[189] frequent dining at fast food outlets is associated with what health officials call the American "obesity epidemic." Highly sweetened soft drinks are widely popular; sugared beverages account for 9% of the average American's caloric intake.[191]

Sports[]

Main article: Sports in the United States
2006 Pro Bowl tackle

The Pro Bowl (2006), American football's annual all-star game

Since the late nineteenth century, baseball has been regarded as the national sport; football, basketball, and ice hockey are the country's three other leading professional team sports. College football and basketball also attract large audiences. Football is now by several measures the most popular spectator sport in the United States.[192] Boxing and horse racing were once the most watched individual sports, but they have been eclipsed by golf and auto racing, particularly NASCAR. Soccer, though not a leading professional sport in the country, is played widely at the youth and amateur levels. Tennis and many outdoor sports are also popular.

While most major U.S. sports have evolved out of European practices, basketball, volleyball, skateboarding, and snowboarding are American inventions. Lacrosse and surfing arose from Native American and Native Hawaiian activities that predate Western contact. Eight Olympic Games have taken place in the United States. The United States has won 2,191 medals at the Summer Olympic Games, more than any other country,[193] and 216 in the Winter Olympic Games, the second most.[194]

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Adams, J.Q., and Pearlie Strother-Adams (2001). Dealing with Diversity. Chicago: Kendall/Hunt. ISBN 078728145X.
  2. 2.0 2.1 2.2 Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named IMF GDP
  3. The European Union has a larger collective economy, but is not a single nation.
  4. Dull, Jonathan R. (2003). "Diplomacy of the Revolution, to 1783," p. 352, chap. in A Companion to the American Revolution, ed. Jack P. Greene and J. R. Pole. Maiden, Mass.: Blackwell, pp. 352–361. ISBN 1405116749.
  5. Template:Cite web Template:Cite web
  6. Template:Cite web
  7. Template:Cite web
  8. Wilson, Kenneth G. (1993). The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 27–28. ISBN 0231069898.
  9. Template:Cite web
  10. 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 Template:Cite web
  11. Template:Cite web
  12. Template:Cite web
  13. Template:Cite web
  14. Template:Cite web
  15. Template:Cite web
  16. Template:Cite web
  17. Template:Cite webTemplate:Citation broken
  18. Template:Cite webTemplate:Citation broken
  19. Template:Cite web
  20. Template:Cite web
  21. Template:Cite web
  22. Template:Cite web
  23. Template:Cite web
  24. Template:Cite web
  25. Mann, Charles C. (2005). 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. New York: Knopf. ISBN 140004006X.
  26. Template:Cite web
  27. Russell, David Lee (2005). The American Revolution in the Southern Colonies. Jefferson, N.C., and London: McFarland, p. 12. ISBN 0786407832.
  28. Template:Cite web
  29. Morrison, Michael A. (1999). Slavery and the American West: The Eclipse of Manifest Destiny and the Coming of the Civil War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, pp. 13–21. ISBN 0807847968.
  30. Scheb, John M., and John M. Scheb II (2002). An Introduction to the American Legal System. Florence, KY: Delmar, p. 6. ISBN 0766827593.
  31. Raskin, James B. (2003). Overruling Democracy: The Supreme Court Vs. the American People. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 36–38. ISBN 0415934397.
  32. Template:Cite web
  33. Template:Cite web
  34. Template:Citeweb
  35. Template:Cite web
  36. Template:Cite web
  37. Template:Cite web Template:Cite web
  38. Template:Cite web
  39. Template:Cite web
  40. Template:Cite web
  41. Template:Cite web
  42. Template:Cite web
  43. Template:Cite web
  44. Template:Cite web
  45. Template:Cite press release
  46. Template:Cite web
  47. 47.0 47.1 47.2 47.3 47.4 Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named USCB IP&HIC 2006
  48. 48.0 48.1 Template:Cite web
  49. Template:Cite web
  50. Template:Cite web
  51. Template:Cite web
  52. 52.0 52.1 Template:Citeweb
  53. Template:Cite web
  54. Template:Cite web
  55. Template:Cite web Template:Cite web
  56. Template:Cite web
  57. Template:Cite web
  58. Template:Citeweb Template:Citeweb
  59. Template:Cite web
  60. Template:Cite web
  61. Template:Cite web
  62. Template:Cite web
  63. Template:Cite web
  64. 64.0 64.1 Template:Citeweb
  65. Template:Cite web
  66. Template:Cite web
  67. Template:Cite web
  68. Template:Cite web
  69. Template:Cite web
  70. 70.0 70.1 Template:Cite web
  71. Template:Cite web
  72. Template:Cite web
  73. Template:Cite web
  74. Template:Cite web
  75. Template:Cite web Gilbert, Dennis (1998). The American Class Structure. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. ISBN 0534505201.
  76. Template:Cite web
  77. Template:Cite web
  78. Template:Cite web For an argument that there has been no sustained, significant increase in inequality since 1988, see Template:Cite web
  79. Template:Cite web
  80. Template:Cite web
  81. Template:Cite web
  82. Template:Cite web
  83. Template:Cite web
  84. Template:Cite web Template:Cite web Template:Cite web
  85. Template:Cite web
  86. Template:Cite web
  87. Template:Cite web
  88. Template:Cite web
  89. Template:Cite web
  90. Template:Cite web
  91. Template:Cite web
  92. Template:Cite web
  93. Template:Cite web
  94. Template:Cite web
  95. Template:Cite web
  96. Template:Cite web
  97. Template:Cite web
  98. Template:Cite web Template:Cite web
  99. Template:Cite web
  100. Template:Cite web
  101. Template:Cite web
  102. Template:Cite web
  103. Template:Cite web
  104. 104.0 104.1 Template:Cite web
  105. 105.0 105.1 105.2 105.3 Template:Cite web
  106. 106.0 106.1 106.2 106.3 106.4 Template:Cite web
  107. Template:Cite web
  108. Template:Cite web
  109. Template:Cite web
  110. Template:Cite web
  111. Template:Cite web
  112. Template:Cite web
  113. Template:Cite web
  114. Template:Cite web
  115. Template:Cite web
  116. Template:Cite web
  117. 117.0 117.1 Template:Cite web
  118. Template:Cite web
  119. Template:Cite web
  120. 120.0 120.1 Template:Cite web
  121. Template:Cite web
  122. Template:Cite web
  123. Template:Cite web
  124. Template:Cite book
  125. Template:Cite web Template:Cite web
  126. Template:Cite web
  127. 127.0 127.1 Template:Cite web Template:Citation
      The study is referenced in the U.S. Census Bureau's Statistical Abstract of the United States Self-Described Religious Identification of Adult Population: 1990 and 2001.
  128. Template:Cite web
  129. Template:Cite web
  130. Template:Cite web
  131. Template:Cite web
  132. Template:Cite web
  133. Template:Cite web
  134. For more detail on U.S. literacy, see A First Look at the Literacy of America’s Adults in the 21st century, U.S. Department of Education (2003).
  135. Template:Cite web
  136. Template:Cite web
  137. Template:Cite web
  138. Template:Cite web
  139. Template:Cite web
  140. Martin, Nicole (2007-08-24). Template:Citation/make link. The Daily Telegraph. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1560849/UK-cancer-survival-rate-lowest-in-Europe.html.  Template:Cite journal
  141. Template:Cite web
  142. Template:Cite book
  143. Template:Cite web
  144. Template:Cite web
  145. Template:Cite web
  146. OECD Health Data 2000: A Comparative Analysis of 29 Countries (Paris: OECD, 2000). See also Template:Cite web
  147. Template:Cite web
  148. Template:Cite journal
  149. Template:Cite web
  150. Template:Cite web
  151. Template:Cite web
  152. Template:Cite web
  153. Template:Cite web
  154. Template:Cite web Template:Cite journal
  155. 155.0 155.1 Template:Cite web
  156. Template:Cite web
  157. Template:Cite web Template:Cite web
  158. 158.0 158.1 158.2 Template:Cite web
  159. Template:Cite web For the latest detailed country data, see Template:Cite web There are reports that China's actual prison population and incarceration rate and North Korea's incarceration rate may exceed those of the United States. See Template:Cite web
  160. Template:Cite web
  161. Template:Cite web
  162. Template:Cite web
  163. Template:Cite web
  164. Template:Cite web
  165. Template:Cite web
  166. Thompson, William, and Joseph Hickey (2005). Society in Focus. Boston: Pearson. ISBN 020541365X.
  167. Fiorina, Morris P., and Paul E. Peterson (2000). The New American Democracy. London: Longman, p. 97. ISBN 0321070585.
  168. Holloway, Joseph E. (2005). Africanisms in American Culture, 2d ed. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, pp. 18–38. ISBN 0253344794. Johnson, Fern L. (1999). Speaking Culturally: Language Diversity in the United States. Thousand Oaks, Calif., London, and New Delhi: Sage, p. 116. ISBN 0803959125.
  169. Template:Cite book
  170. Template:Cite book Template:Cite book Template:Cite web
  171. Template:Cite book
  172. Template:Cite book
  173. Template:Cite book
  174. Boritt, Gabor S. (1994). Lincoln and the Economics of the American Dream. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, p. 1. ISBN 0252064453.
  175. Template:Cite web Template:Cite web
  176. Template:Cite web
  177. Williams, Brian, Stacey C. Sawyer, and Carl M. Wahlstrom (2005). Marriages, Families and Intimate Relationships. Boston: Pearson. ISBN 0205366740.
  178. Template:Cite web
  179. Template:Cite web The source does not reflect the recent court ruling in California and thus indicates forty-four states.
  180. Village Voice: 100 Best Films of the 20th century (2001). Filmsite.org; Sight and Sound Top Ten Poll 2002. BFI. Retrieved on June 19, 2007.
  181. Template:Cite web Template:Cite web
  182. Template:Cite web
  183. Template:Cite web
  184. Template:Cite web
  185. Template:Cite web
  186. Template:Cite web
  187. Meyers, Jeffrey (1999). Hemingway: A Biography. New York: Da Capo, p. 139. ISBN 0306808900.
  188. Brown, Milton W. (1988 1963). The Story of the Armory Show. New York: Abbeville. ISBN 0896597954.
  189. 189.0 189.1 Template:Cite web
  190. Smith, Andrew F. (2004). The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 131–32. ISBN 0195154371. Levenstein, Harvey (2003). Revolution at the Table: The Transformation of the American Diet. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, pp. 154–55. ISBN 0520234391.
  191. Template:Cite web Template:Cite web
  192. Template:Cite web Maccambridge, Michael (2004). America's Game: The Epic Story of How Pro Football Captured a Nation. New York: Random House. ISBN 0375504540.
  193. Template:Cite web
  194. Template:Cite web Norway is first; the Soviet Union is third, and would be second if its medal count was combined with Russia's.

All items (449)

Advertisement