USA

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United States of America
Template:Infobox country/imagetable
Motto:  "In God We Trust" Other traditional mottos: Template:Native phrase "Out of many, one" Template:Native phrase "He has favored our undertakings" Template:Native phrase "New order of the ages"
Anthem:  "The Star-Spangled Banner" March:  "The Stars and Stripes Forever"
Great Seal:
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Capital	Washington, D.C. 38°53′N 77°01′W
Largest city	New York City 40°43′N 74°00′W
Official languages	None at federal level
National language	English
Ethnic groups (2019)	By race: 76.3% White 13.4% Black 5.9% Asian 2.8% Other/Multiracial 1.3% Native American 0.2% Pacific Islander Ethnicity: 18.5% Hispanic or Latino 81.5% Non-Hispanic or Latino
Religion	See Religion in the United States
Demonym(s)	American
Government	Federal presidential constitutional republic
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Legislature	Congress
• Upper house	Senate
• Lower house	House of Representatives
Independence  from Great Britain
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Area
• Total area	Template:Convinfobox/sec2 (3rd/4th)
• Water (%)	4.66 (as of 2015)
• Total land area	3,531,905 sq mi (9,147,590 km2)
Population
• 2019 estimate	328,239,523 (3rd)
• 2010 census	308,745,538 (3rd)
• Density	Template:Convinfobox/sec2 (146th)
GDP (PPP)	2020 estimate
• Total	$20.807 trillion (2nd)
• Per capita	$63,051 (7th)
GDP (nominal)	2020 estimate
• Total	$20.807 trillion (1st)
• Per capita	$63,051 (5th)
Gini (2020)	Template:IncreaseNegative 48.5 high
HDI (2018)	0.920 very high · 15th
Currency	[[]] ($) (USD)
Time zone	UTC−4 to −12, 10, 11
• Summer (DST)	UTC−4 to −10
Date format	mm/dd/yyyy yyyy-mm-dd
Mains electricity	120 V–60 Hz
Driving side	right
Calling code	1
ISO 3166 code	US
Internet TLD	Generic top-level domain .com, .org, .net, .edu, .gov, .mil ccTLD (generally not used in the U.S.) .us, .pr, .as, .gu, .mp, .vi and, formerly, .um (removed by ICANN in 2008, but still recognized by the U.S. government as a ccTLD)

The United States of America (USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country located primarily in North America, consisting of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, and various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles (9.8 million square kilometers), it is the world's third- or fourth-largest country by total area. With a population of over 328 million, it is the third most populous country in the world. The national capital is Washington, D.C., and the most populous city is New York City.

Paleo-Indians migrated from Siberia to the North American mainland at least 12,000 years ago, and European colonization began in the 16th century. The United States emerged from the thirteen British colonies established along the East Coast. Disputes over taxation and political representation with Great Britain led to the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), which established independence. In the late 18th century, the U.S. began vigorously expanding across North America, gradually acquiring new territories, conquering and displacing Native Americans, and admitting new states; by 1848, the United States spanned the continent. Slavery was legal in the southern United States until the second half of the 19th century when the American Civil War led to its abolition. The Spanish–American War and World War I established the U.S. as a world power, a status confirmed by the outcome of World War II. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union engaged in various proxy wars but avoided direct military conflict. They also competed in the Space Race, culminating in the 1969 spaceflight that first landed humans on the Moon. The Soviet Union's collapse in 1991 ended the Cold War and left the United States as the world's sole superpower, with immense power in global geopolitics.

The United States is a federal republic and a representative democracy with three separate branches of government, including a bicameral legislature. It is a founding member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States (OAS), NATO, and other international organizations. It is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. The U.S. ranks high in international measures of economic freedom, reduced levels of perceived corruption, quality of life, and quality of higher education. Despite income and wealth disparities, the United States continuously ranks high in measures of socioeconomic performance. It is one of the most racially and ethnically diverse nations in the world. Considered a melting pot of cultures and ethnicities, its population has been profoundly shaped by centuries of immigration.

A highly developed country, the United States accounts for approximately a quarter of global gross domestic product (GDP) and is the world's largest economy by nominal GDP. By value, the United States is the world's largest importer and the second-largest exporter of goods. Although its population is only 4.3% of the world total, it holds 29.4% of the total wealth in the world, the largest share held by any country. Making up more than a third of global military spending, it is the foremost military power in the world and is a leading political, cultural, and scientific force internationally.

Etymology

See also: Naming of the Americas, Names for United States citizens, and American (word)

The first known use of the name "America" dates back to 1507, when it appeared on a world map created by the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller. On this map, the name applied to South America in honor of the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci, who was the first to postulate that the West Indies did not represent Asia's eastern limit, but part of a previously unknown landmass. In 1538, the Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator used the name "America" on his own world map, applying it to the entire Western Hemisphere.

The first documentary evidence of the phrase "United States of America" dates from a January 2, 1776 letter written by Stephen Moylan, Esquire, to George Washington's aide-de-camp Joseph Reed. Moylan expressed his wish to go "with full and ample powers from the United States of America to Spain" to seek assistance in the revolutionary war effort. The first known publication of the phrase "United States of America" was in an anonymous essay in The Virginia Gazette newspaper in Williamsburg, Virginia, on April 6, 1776.

The second draft of the Articles of Confederation, prepared by John Dickinson and completed no later than June 17, 1776, declared "The name of this Confederation shall be the 'United States of America'." The final version of the Articles, sent to the states for ratification in late 1777, stated that "The Stile of this Confederacy shall be 'The United States of America'." In June 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote the phrase "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA" in all capitalized letters in the headline of his "original Rough draught" of the Declaration of Independence. This draft of the document did not surface until June 21, 1776, and it is unclear whether it was written before or after Dickinson used the term in his June 17 draft of the Articles of Confederation.

The short form "United States" is also standard. Other common forms are the "U.S.", the "USA", and "America". The term "America" was seldom used in the United States before the 1890s, and rarely used by presidents before Theodore Roosevelt. It does not appear in patriotic songs composed during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including "The Star Spangled Banner", "My Country, 'Tis of Thee", and the "Battle Hymn of the Republic", although it is common in 20th-century songs like "God Bless America". Colloquial names are the "U.S. of A." and, internationally, the "States". "Columbia", a name popular in American poetry and songs of the late 18th century, derives its origin from Christopher Columbus; it appears in the name "District of Columbia". Many landmarks and institutions in the Western Hemisphere bear his name, including the country of Colombia.

The phrase "United States" was originally plural in American usage. It described a collection of independent states—e.g., "the United States are"—and the plural form was used in documents as recent as the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1865. The singular form became popular after the end of the Civil War and is now standard usage in the U.S.; the plural is retained only in traditional, idiomatic expressions such as "these United States". The difference is more significant than usage; it is a difference between a collection of states and a unit.

A citizen of the United States is an "American". "United States", "American" and "U.S." refer to the country adjectivally ("American values", "U.S. forces"). In English, the word "American" rarely refers to topics or subjects not directly connected with the United States.

History

Main articles: History of the United States, Timeline of United States history, American business history, Economic history of the United States, and Labor history of the United States

Indigenous peoples and pre-Columbian history

Further information: Native Americans in the United States and Pre-Columbian era

The Cliff Palace, built by the Native American Puebloans between AD 1190 and 1260

It has been generally accepted that the first inhabitants of North America migrated from Siberia by way of the Bering land bridge and arrived at least 12,000 years ago; however, some evidence suggests an even earlier date of arrival. The Clovis culture, which appeared around 11,000 BC, is believed to represent the first wave of human settlement of the Americas. This was likely the first of three major waves of migration into North America; later waves brought the ancestors of present-day Athabaskans, Aleuts, and Eskimos.

Over time, indigenous cultures in North America grew increasingly complex, and some, such as the pre-Columbian Mississippian culture in the southeast, developed advanced agriculture, architecture, and complex societies. The city-state of Cahokia is the largest, most complex pre-Columbian archaeological site in the modern-day United States. In the Four Corners region, Ancestral Puebloan culture developed from centuries of agricultural experimentation. The Haudenosaunee, located in the southern Great Lakes region, was established at some point between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries. Most prominent along the Atlantic coast were the Algonquian tribes, who practiced hunting and trapping, along with limited cultivation.

Estimating the native population of North America at the time of European contact is difficult. Douglas H. Ubelaker of the Smithsonian Institution estimated that there was a population of 92,916 in the south Atlantic states and a population of 473,616 in the Gulf states, but most academics regard this figure as too low. Anthropologist Henry F. Dobyns believed the populations were much higher, suggesting around 1.1 million along the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, 2.2 million people living between Florida and Massachusetts, 5.2 million in the Mississippi Valley and tributaries, and around 700,000 people in the Florida peninsula.

European settlements

Further information: Colonial history of the United States and Thirteen Colonies

The first Europeans to arrive in the contiguous United States were Spanish conquistadors such as Juan Ponce de León, who made his first visit to Florida in 1513. Even earlier, Christopher Columbus had landed in Puerto Rico on his 1493 voyage. The Spanish set up the first settlements in Florida and New Mexico, such as Saint Augustine and Santa Fe. The French established their own settlements along the Mississippi River, notably New Orleans. Successful English settlement of the eastern coast of North America began with the Virginia Colony in 1607 at Jamestown and with the Pilgrims colony at Plymouth in 1620. Many settlers were dissenting Christians who came seeking religious freedom. The continent's first elected legislative assembly, Virginia's House of Burgesses, was founded in 1619. Documents such as the Mayflower Compact and the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut established precedents for representative self-government and constitutionalism that would develop throughout the American colonies.

File:North America 1748.PNG

European colonial territories in North America during the mid-18th century

In the early days of colonization, many European settlers were subject to food shortages, disease, and attacks from Native Americans. Native Americans were also often at war with neighboring tribes and European settlers. In many cases, however, the natives and settlers came to depend on one another. Settlers traded for food and animal pelts; natives for guns, tools and other European goods. Natives taught many settlers to cultivate corn, beans, and other foodstuffs. European missionaries and others felt it was important to "civilize" the Native Americans and urged them to adopt European agricultural practices and lifestyles. However, with the increased European colonization of North America, the Native Americans were often conquered and displaced. The native population of America declined after European arrival for various reasons, primarily diseases such as smallpox and measles.

African slaves started to be imported into Colonial America via the transatlantic slave trade. Because of a lower prevalence of tropical diseases and better treatment, slaves had a much higher life expectancy in North America than in South America, leading to a rapid increase in their numbers. Colonial society was largely divided over the religious and moral implications of slavery, and several colonies passed acts both against and in favor of the practice. However, by the turn of the 18th century, African slaves had supplanted European indentured servants as cash crop labor, especially in the American South.

The Thirteen Colonies (New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia) that would become the United States of America were administered by the British as overseas dependencies. All nonetheless had local governments with elections open to most free men. With extremely high birth rates, low death rates, and steady settlement, the colonial population grew rapidly, eclipsing Native American populations. The Christian revivalist movement of the 1730s and 1740s known as the Great Awakening fueled interest both in religion and in religious liberty.

During the Seven Years' War (1756–63), known in the U.S. as the French and Indian War, British forces captured Canada from the French. With the creation of the Province of Quebec, Canada's francophone population would remain isolated from the English-speaking colonial dependencies of Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and the Thirteen Colonies. Excluding the Native Americans who lived there, the Thirteen Colonies had a population of over 2.1 million in 1770, about a third that of Britain. Despite continuing new arrivals, the rate of natural increase was such that by the 1770s only a small minority of Americans had been born overseas. The colonies' distance from Britain had allowed the development of self-government, but their unprecedented success motivated British monarchs to periodically seek to reassert royal authority.

Independence and expansion

Further information: American Revolutionary War, United States Declaration of Independence, American Revolution, and Territorial evolution of the United States

Declaration of Independence, painting by John Trumbull, depicts the Committee of Five presenting their draft of the Declaration to the Continental Congress, July 4, 1776

The American Revolutionary War fought by the Thirteen Colonies against the British Empire was the first successful war of independence against a European power. Americans had developed an ideology of "republicanism", asserting that government rested on the will of the people as expressed in their local legislatures. They demanded their "rights as Englishmen" and "no taxation without representation". The British insisted on administering the empire through Parliament, and the conflict escalated into war.

The Second Continental Congress unanimously adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776; this day is celebrated annually as Independence Day. In 1777, the Articles of Confederation established a decentralized government that operated until 1789.

After its defeat at the Siege of Yorktown in 1781, Britain signed a peace treaty. American sovereignty became internationally recognized, and the country was granted all lands east of the Mississippi River. Tensions with Britain remained, however, leading to the War of 1812, which was fought to a draw. Nationalists led the Philadelphia Convention of 1787 in writing the United States Constitution, ratified in state conventions in 1788. The federal government was reorganized into three branches in 1789, on the principle of creating salutary checks and balances. George Washington, who had led the Continental Army to victory, was the first president elected under the new constitution. The Bill of Rights, forbidding federal restriction of personal freedoms and guaranteeing a range of legal protections, was adopted in 1791.

Territorial acquisitions of the United States between 1783 and 1917

Although the federal government outlawed American participation in the Atlantic slave trade in 1807, after 1820, cultivation of the highly profitable cotton crop exploded in the Deep South, and along with it, the slave population. The Second Great Awakening, especially in the period 1800–1840, converted millions to evangelical Protestantism. In the North, it energized multiple social reform movements, including abolitionism; in the South, Methodists and Baptists proselytized among slave populations.

Beginning in the late 18th century, American settlers began to expand westward, prompting a long series of American Indian Wars. The 1803 Louisiana Purchase almost doubled the nation's area, Spain ceded Florida and other Gulf Coast territory in 1819, the Republic of Texas was annexed in 1845 during a period of expansionism, and the 1846 Oregon Treaty with Britain led to U.S. control of the present-day American Northwest. Victory in the Mexican–American War resulted in the 1848 Mexican Cession of California and much of the present-day American Southwest, making the U.S. span the continent.

The California Gold Rush of 1848–49 spurred migration to the Pacific coast, which led to the California Genocide and the creation of additional western states. After the Civil War, new transcontinental railways made relocation easier for settlers, expanded internal trade, and increased conflicts with Native Americans. In 1869, a new Peace Policy nominally promised to protect Native Americans from abuses, avoid further war, and secure their eventual U.S. citizenship. Nonetheless, large-scale conflicts continued throughout the West into the 1900s.

Civil War and Reconstruction era

Main articles: American Civil War and Reconstruction era

Further information: Origins of the American Civil War

The Battle of Gettysburg, fought between Union and Confederate forces on July 1–3, 1863 around the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, marked a turning point in the American Civil War.

Irreconcilable sectional conflict regarding the enslavement of Africans and African Americans ultimately led to the American Civil War. With the 1860 election of Republican Abraham Lincoln, conventions in thirteen slave states declared secession and formed the Confederate States of America (the "South" or the "Confederacy"), while the federal government (the "Union") maintained that secession was illegal. In order to bring about this secession, military action was initiated by the secessionists, and the Union responded in kind. The ensuing war would become the deadliest military conflict in American history, resulting in the deaths of approximately 618,000 soldiers as well as many civilians. The Union initially simply fought to keep the country united. Nevertheless, as casualties mounted after 1863 and Lincoln delivered his Emancipation Proclamation, the main purpose of the war from the Union's viewpoint became the abolition of slavery. Indeed, when the Union ultimately won the war in April 1865, each of the states in the defeated South was required to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment, which prohibited slavery. Two other amendments were also ratified, ensuring citizenship for blacks and, at least in theory, voting rights for them as well.

Reconstruction began in earnest following the war. While President Lincoln attempted to foster friendship and forgiveness between the Union and the former Confederacy, his assassination on April 14, 1865 drove a wedge between North and South again. Republicans in the federal government made it their goal to oversee the rebuilding of the South and to ensure the rights of African Americans. They persisted until the Compromise of 1877 when the Republicans agreed to cease protecting the rights of African Americans in the South in order for Democrats to concede the presidential election of 1876.

Southern white Democrats, calling themselves "Redeemers", took control of the South after the end of Reconstruction. From 1890 to 1910, the Redeemers established so-called Jim Crow laws, disenfranchising most blacks and some poor whites throughout the region. Blacks faced racial segregation, especially in the South. They also occasionally experienced vigilante violence, including lynching.

Further immigration, expansion, and industrialization

Main articles: Economic history of the United States and Technological and industrial history of the United States

Ellis Island, in New York Harbor, was a major entry point for European immigration into the U.S.

In the North, urbanization and an unprecedented influx of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe supplied a surplus of labor for the country's industrialization and transformed its culture. National infrastructure, including telegraph and transcontinental railroads, spurred economic growth and greater settlement and development of the American Old West. The later invention of electric light and the telephone would also affect communication and urban life.

The United States fought Indian Wars west of the Mississippi River from 1810 to at least 1890. Most of these conflicts ended with the cession of Native American territory and their confinement to Indian reservations. Additionally, the Trail of Tears in the 1830s exemplified the Indian removal policy that forcibly resettled Indians. This further expanded acreage under mechanical cultivation, increasing surpluses for international markets. Mainland expansion also included the purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867. In 1893, pro-American elements in Hawaii overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy and formed the Republic of Hawaii, which the U.S. annexed in 1898. Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines were ceded by Spain in the same year, following the Spanish–American War. American Samoa was acquired by the United States in 1900 after the end of the Second Samoan Civil War. The U.S. Virgin Islands were purchased from Denmark in 1917.

Rapid economic development during the late 19th and early 20th centuries fostered the rise of many prominent industrialists. Tycoons like Cornelius Vanderbilt, John D. Rockefeller, and Andrew Carnegie led the nation's progress in the railroad, petroleum, and steel industries. Banking became a major part of the economy, with J. P. Morgan playing a notable role. The American economy boomed, becoming the world's largest. These dramatic changes were accompanied by social unrest and the rise of populist, socialist, and anarchist movements. This period eventually ended with the advent of the Progressive Era, which saw significant reforms including women's suffrage, alcohol prohibition, regulation of consumer goods, greater antitrust measures to ensure competition and attention to worker conditions.

World War I, Great Depression, and World War II

Further information: World War I, Great Depression, and World War II

The Empire State Building was the tallest building in the world when completed in 1931, during the Great Depression.

The United States remained neutral from the outbreak of World War I in 1914 until 1917 when it joined the war as an "associated power" alongside the Allies of World War I, helping to turn the tide against the Central Powers. In 1919, President Woodrow Wilson took a leading diplomatic role at the Paris Peace Conference and advocated strongly for the U.S. to join the League of Nations. However, the Senate refused to approve this and did not ratify the Treaty of Versailles that established the League of Nations.

In 1920, the women's rights movement won passage of a constitutional amendment granting women's suffrage. The 1920s and 1930s saw the rise of radio for mass communication and the invention of early television. The prosperity of the Roaring Twenties ended with the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the onset of the Great Depression. After his election as president in 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt responded with the New Deal. The Great Migration of millions of African Americans out of the American South began before World War I and extended through the 1960s; whereas the Dust Bowl of the mid-1930s impoverished many farming communities and spurred a new wave of western migration.

U.S. Marines raising the American flag on Mount Suribachi during the Battle of Iwo Jima in one of the most iconic images of the war.

At first effectively neutral during World War II, the United States 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 and, the following year, to intern about 120,000 U.S. residents (including American citizens) of Japanese descent. Although Japan attacked the United States first, the U.S. nonetheless pursued a "Europe first" defense policy. The United States thus left its vast Asian colony, the Philippines, isolated and fighting a losing struggle against Japanese invasion and occupation. During the war, the United States was one of the "Four Powers" who met to plan the postwar world, along with Britain, the Soviet Union, and China. Although the nation lost around 400,000 military personnel, it emerged relatively undamaged from the war with even greater economic and military influence.

The United States played a leading role in the Bretton Woods and Yalta conferences, which signed agreements on new international financial institutions and Europe's postwar reorganization. As an Allied 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 and Japan then fought each other in the largest naval battle in history, the Battle of Leyte Gulf. The United States eventually developed the first nuclear weapons and used them on Japan in the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945; the Japanese surrendered on September 2, ending World War II.

Cold War and civil rights era

Main articles: History of the United States (1945–1964), History of the United States (1964–1980), and History of the United States (1980–1991)

Further information: Cold War, Civil Rights Movement, War on Poverty, Space Race, and Reaganomics

Martin Luther King Jr. gives his famous "I Have a Dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington, 1963

After World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union competed for power, influence, and prestige during what became known as the Cold War, driven by an ideological divide between capitalism and communism. They dominated the military affairs of Europe, with the U.S. and its NATO allies on one side and the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies on the other. The U.S. developed a policy of containment towards the expansion of communist influence. While the U.S. and Soviet Union engaged in proxy wars and developed powerful nuclear arsenals, the two countries avoided direct military conflict.

The United States often opposed Third World movements that it viewed as Soviet-sponsored and occasionally pursued direct action for regime change against left-wing governments, even occasionally supporting authoritarian right-wing regimes. American troops fought communist Chinese and North Korean forces in the Korean War of 1950–53. The Soviet Union's 1957 launch of the first artificial satellite and its 1961 launch of the first crewed spaceflight initiated a "Space Race" in which the United States became the first nation to land a man on the Moon in 1969. A proxy war in Southeast Asia eventually evolved into the Vietnam War (1955–1975), with full American participation.

At home, the U.S. had experienced sustained economic expansion and a rapid growth of its population and middle class following World War II. After a surge in female labor participation, especially in the 1970s, by 1985, the majority of women aged 16 and over were employed. Construction of an Interstate Highway System transformed the nation's infrastructure over the following decades. Millions moved from farms and inner cities to large suburban housing developments. In 1959 Hawaii became the 50th and last U.S. state added to the country. The growing Civil Rights Movement used nonviolence to confront segregation and discrimination, with Martin Luther King Jr. becoming a prominent leader and figurehead. A combination of court decisions and legislation, culminating in the Civil Rights Act of 1968, sought to end racial discrimination. Meanwhile, a counterculture movement grew, which was fueled by opposition to the Vietnam war, the Black Power movement, and the sexual revolution.

U.S. president Ronald Reagan (left) and Soviet general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev in Geneva, 1985

The launch of a "War on Poverty" expanded entitlements and welfare spending, including the creation of Medicare and Medicaid, two programs that provide health coverage to the elderly and poor, respectively, and the means-tested Food Stamp Program and Aid to Families with Dependent Children.

The 1970s and early 1980s saw the onset of stagflation. After his election in 1980, President Ronald Reagan responded to economic stagnation with free-market oriented reforms. Following the collapse of détente, he abandoned "containment" and initiated the more aggressive "rollback" strategy towards the Soviet Union. The late 1980s brought a "thaw" in relations with the Soviet Union, and its collapse in 1991 finally ended the Cold War. This brought about unipolarity with the U.S. unchallenged as the world's dominant superpower.

Contemporary history

Main articles: History of the United States (1991–2008) and History of the United States (2008–present)

Further information: Gulf War, September 11 attacks, War on Terror, 2008 financial crisis, and Affordable Care Act

The World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan during the September 11 terrorist attacks by the Islamic terrorist group Al-Qaeda in 2001

After the Cold War, the conflict in the Middle East triggered a crisis in 1990, when Iraq invaded and attempted to annex Kuwait, an ally of the United States. Fearing the spread of instability, in August, President George H. W. Bush launched and led the Gulf War against Iraq; waged until January 1991 by coalition forces from 34 nations, it ended in the expulsion of Iraqi forces from Kuwait and restoration of the monarchy.

Originating within U.S. military defense networks, the Internet spread to international academic platforms and then to the public in the 1990s, greatly affecting the global economy, society, and culture. Due to the dot-com boom, stable monetary policy, and reduced social welfare spending, the 1990s saw the longest economic expansion in modern U.S. history. Beginning in 1994, the U.S. signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), causing trade among the U.S., Canada, and Mexico to soar.

On September 11, 2001, Al-Qaeda terrorist hijackers flew passenger planes into the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon near Washington, D.C., killing nearly 3,000 people. In response, President George W. Bush launched the War on Terror, which included a war in Afghanistan and the 2003–11 Iraq War. A 2011 military operation in Pakistan led to the death of the leader of Al-Qaeda.

Government policy designed to promote affordable housing, widespread failures in corporate and regulatory governance, and historically low interest rates set by the Federal Reserve led to the mid-2000s housing bubble, which culminated with the 2008 financial crisis, the nation's largest economic contraction since the Great Depression. During the crisis, assets owned by Americans lost about a quarter of their value. Barack Obama, the first African-American and multiracial president, was elected in 2008 amid the crisis, and subsequently passed stimulus measures and the Dodd–Frank Act in an attempt to mitigate its negative effects and ensure there would not be a repeat of the crisis. In 2010, President Obama led efforts to pass the Affordable Care Act, the most sweeping reform to the nation's healthcare system in nearly five decades.

In the presidential election of 2016, Republican Donald Trump was elected as the 45th president of the United States. On January 20, 2020, the first case of COVID-19 in the United States was confirmed. As of 5 November 2020, the United States has over 9.4 million COVID-19 cases and over 233,000 deaths. The United States is by far the country with the most cases of COVID-19 since April 11, 2020.. Trump was elected again as the 47th president of the country on November 5, 2024, succeeding Joe Biden.

Geography, climate, and environment

Main articles: Geography of the United States, Climate of the United States, Environment of the United States, and Environmental issues in the United States

Köppen climate classifications of U.S. states and territories

The 48 contiguous states and the District of Columbia occupy a combined area of 3,119,885 square miles (8,080,470 km²). Of this area, 2,959,064 square miles (7,663,940 km²) is contiguous land, composing 83.65% of total U.S. land area. Hawaii, occupying an archipelago in the central Pacific, southwest of North America, is 10,931 square miles (28,311 km²) in area. The populated territories of Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, and U.S. Virgin Islands together cover 9,185 square miles (23,789 km²). Measured by only land area, the United States is third in size behind Russia and China, just ahead of Canada.

The United States is the world's third- or fourth-largest nation by total area (land and water), ranking behind Russia and Canada and nearly equal to 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 measured.

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, west of the Great Plains, extend north to south across the country, peaking around 14,000 feet (4,300 m) in Colorado. Farther west are the rocky Great Basin and deserts such as the Chihuahua and Mojave. The Sierra Nevada and Cascade mountain ranges run close to the Pacific coast, both ranges reaching altitudes higher than 14,000 feet (4,300 m). The lowest and highest points in the contiguous United States are in the state of California, and only about 84 miles (135 km) apart. At an elevation of 20,310 feet (6,190.5 m), Alaska's Denali is the highest 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 Great Plains west of the 100th meridian are semi-arid. Much of the Western mountains have an alpine climate. 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. Hawaii and the southern tip of Florida are tropical, as well as its territories in the Caribbean and the Pacific. States bordering the Gulf of Mexico are prone to hurricanes, and most of the world's tornadoes occur in the country, mainly in Tornado Alley areas in the Midwest and South. Overall, the United States receives more high-impact extreme weather incidents than any other country in the world.

Wildlife and conservation

Main articles: Fauna of the United States and Flora of the United States

See also: Category:Biota of the United States

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

The U.S. ecology is megadiverse: about 17,000 species of vascular plants occur in the contiguous United States and Alaska, and more than 1,800 species of flowering plants are found in Hawaii, few of which occur on the mainland. The United States is home to 428 mammal species, 784 bird species, 311 reptile species, and 295 amphibian species, as well as about 91,000 insect species.

There are 62 national parks and hundreds of other federally managed parks, forests, and wilderness areas. Altogether, the government owns about 28% of the country's land area, mostly in the western states. Most of this land is protected, though some is leased for oil and gas drilling, mining, logging, or cattle ranching, and about .86% is used for military purposes.

Environmental issues include debates on oil and nuclear energy, dealing with air and water pollution, the economic costs of protecting wildlife, logging and deforestation, and international responses to global warming. The most prominent environmental agency is the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), created by presidential order in 1970. The idea of wilderness has shaped the management of public lands since 1964, with the Wilderness Act. The Endangered Species Act of 1973 is intended to protect threatened and endangered species and their habitats, which are monitored by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service.

The United States is ranked 24th among nations in the Environmental Performance Index. The country joined the Paris Agreement in 2016 and has many other environmental commitments. It left the Paris Agreement in 2020.

Demographics

Main articles: Americans, Demographics of the United States, Race and ethnicity in the United States, and Family structure in the United States

Population

See also: List of U.S. states by population and List of United States cities by population

The U.S. Census Bureau officially estimated the country's population to be 328,239,523 as of July 1, 2019. According to the Bureau's U.S. Population Clock, on May 23, 2020, the U.S. population had a net gain of one person every 19 seconds, or about 4,547 people per day. The United States is the third most populous nation in the world, after China and India. In 2018 the median age of the United States population was 38.1 years.

In 2018, there were almost 90 million immigrants and U.S.-born children of immigrants in the United States, accounting for 28% of the overall U.S. population. The United States has a very diverse population; 37 ancestry groups have more than one million members. White Americans of European ancestry, mostly German, Irish, English, Italian, Polish and French, including white Hispanics and Latinos from Latin America, form the largest racial group, at 73.1% of the population. African Americans constitute the nation's largest racial minority and third-largest ancestry group, and are around 13% of the total U.S. population. Asian Americans are the country's second-largest racial minority (the three largest Asian ethnic groups are Chinese, Filipino, and Indian).

In 2017, out of the U.S. foreign-born population, some 45% (20.7 million) were naturalized citizens, 27% (12.3 million) were lawful permanent residents, 6% (2.2 million) were temporary lawful residents, and 23% (10.5 million) were unauthorized immigrants. Among current living immigrants to the U.S., the top five countries of birth are Mexico, China, India, the Philippines and El Salvador. Until 2017, the United States led the world in refugee resettlement for decades, admitting more refugees than the rest of the world combined.

About 82% of Americans live in urban areas, including suburbs; about half of those reside in cities with populations over 50,000. In 2008, 273 incorporated municipalities had populations over 100,000, nine cities had more than one million residents, and four cities had over two million (namely New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston). Many U.S. metropolitan populations are growing rapidly, particularly in the South and West.

As of 2018, 52% of Americans age 15 and over were married, 6% were widowed, 10% were divorced, and 32% had never been married. The total fertility rate was 1820.5 births per 1000 women in 2016. In 2013, the average age at first birth was 26, and 41% of births were to unmarried women. In 2019, the U.S. had the world's highest rate of children living in single-parent households.

Language

Main article: Languages of the United States

See also: Language Spoken at Home in the United States of America, List of endangered languages in the United States, and Language education in the United States

English (specifically, American English) is the de facto national language of the United States. Although there is no official language at the federal level, some laws—such as U.S. naturalization requirements—standardize English, and most states have declared English as the official language. Three states and four U.S. territories have recognized local or indigenous languages in addition to English, including Hawaii (Hawaiian), Alaska (twenty Native languages), South Dakota (Sioux), American Samoa (Samoan), Puerto Rico (Spanish), Guam (Chamorro), and the Northern Mariana Islands (Carolinian and Chamorro). In Puerto Rico, Spanish is more widely spoken than English.

According to the American Community Survey, in 2010 some 229 million people (out of the total U.S. population of 308 million) spoke only English at home. More than 37 million spoke Spanish at home, making it the second most commonly used language in the United States. Other languages spoken at home by one million people or more include Chinese (2.8 million), Tagalog (1.6 million), Vietnamese (1.4 million), French (1.3 million), Korean (1.1 million), and German (1 million).

The most widely taught foreign languages in the United States, in terms of enrollment numbers from kindergarten through university undergraduate education, are Spanish (around 7.2 million students), French (1.5 million), and German (500,000). Other commonly taught languages include Latin, Japanese, American Sign Language, Italian, and Chinese. 18% of all Americans claim to speak both English and another language.

Religion

Main article: Religion in the United States

Religion in the United States (2019)

  Protestantism (43%)

  Catholicism (20%)

  Mormonism (2%)

  Unaffiliated (26%)

  Judaism (2%)

  Islam (1%)

  Buddhism (1%)

  Hinduism (1%)

  Other religions (3%)

  Unanswered (2%)

The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees the free exercise of religion and forbids Congress from passing laws respecting its establishment.

The United States has the world's largest Christian population. In a 2014 survey, 70.6% of adults in the United States identified themselves as Christians; Protestants accounted for 46.5%, while Roman Catholics, at 20.8%, formed the largest single Christian group. In 2014, 5.9% of the U.S. adult population claimed a non-Christian religion. These include Judaism (1.9%), Islam (0.9%), Hinduism (0.7%), and Buddhism (0.7%). The survey also reported that 22.8% of Americans described themselves as agnostic, atheist or simply having no religion—up from 8.2% in 1990.

Protestantism is the largest Christian religious grouping in the United States, accounting for almost half of all Americans. Baptists collectively form the largest branch of Protestantism at 15.4%, and the Southern Baptist Convention is the largest individual Protestant denomination at 5.3% of the U.S. population. Apart from Baptists, other Protestant categories include nondenominational Protestants, Methodists, Pentecostals, unspecified Protestants, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, other Reformed, Episcopalians/Anglicans, Quakers, Adventists, Holiness, Christian fundamentalists, Anabaptists, Pietists, and multiple others.

The Bible Belt is an informal term for a region in the Southern United States in which socially conservative evangelical Protestantism is a significant part of the culture and Christian church attendance across the denominations is generally higher than the nation's average. By contrast, religion plays the least important role in New England and in the Western United States.

Health

See also: Health care in the United States, Health care reform in the United States, and Health insurance in the United States

The Texas Medical Center in downtown Houston is the largest medical complex in the world.

The United States had a life expectancy of 78.6 years at birth in 2017, which was the third year of declines in life expectancy following decades of continuous increase. The recent decline, primarily among the age group 25 to 64, is largely due to record highs in the drug overdose and suicide rates; the country has one of the highest suicide rates among wealthy countries. From 1999 to 2019, more than 770,000 Americans died from drug overdoses. Life expectancy was highest among Asians and Hispanics and lowest among blacks.

Increasing obesity in the United States and improvements in health and longevity outside the U.S. contributed to lowering the country's rank in life expectancy from 11th in the world in 1987 to 42nd in 2007. In 2017, the United States had the lowest life expectancy among Japan, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and seven nations in western Europe. Obesity rates have more than doubled in the last 30 years and are the highest in the industrialized world. Approximately one-third of the adult population is obese and an additional third is overweight. Obesity-related type 2 diabetes is considered epidemic by health care professionals.

In 2010, coronary artery disease, lung cancer, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases, and traffic accidents caused the most years of life lost in the U.S. Low back pain, depression, musculoskeletal disorders, neck pain, and anxiety caused the most years lost to disability. The most harmful risk factors were poor diet, tobacco smoking, obesity, high blood pressure, high blood sugar, physical inactivity, and alcohol use. Alzheimer's disease, drug abuse, kidney disease, cancer, and falls caused the most additional years of life lost over their age-adjusted 1990 per-capita rates. U.S. teenage pregnancy and abortion rates are substantially higher than in other Western nations, especially among blacks and Hispanics.

Health-care coverage in the United States is a combination of public and private efforts and is not universal. In 2017, 12.2% of the population did not carry health insurance. The subject of uninsured and underinsured Americans is a major political issue. The Affordable Care Act, passed in early 2010, roughly halved the uninsured share of the population, though the bill and its ultimate effect are issues of controversy. The U.S. health-care system far outspends any other nation, measured both in per capita spending and as percentage of GDP. However, the U.S. is a global leader in medical innovation.

Education

Main articles: Education in the United States and Higher education in the United States

The University of Georgia, founded in 1785, is the oldest chartered public university in the United States. Universal government-funded education exists in the United States, while there are also many privately funded institutions.

American public education is operated by state and local governments and regulated by the United States Department of Education through restrictions on federal grants. In most states, children are required to attend school from the age of six or seven (generally, kindergarten or first grade) until they turn 18 (generally bringing them through twelfth grade, the end of high school); some states allow students to leave school at 16 or 17.

About 12% of children are enrolled in parochial or nonsectarian private schools. Just over 2% of children are homeschooled. The U.S. spends more on education per student than any nation in the world, spending an average of $12,794 per year on public elementary and secondary school students in the 2016–2017 school year. Some 80% of U.S. college students attend public universities.

Of Americans 25 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.

The United States has many private and public institutions of higher education. The majority of the world's top universities, as listed by various ranking organizations, are in the U.S. There are also local community colleges with generally more open admission policies, shorter academic programs, and lower tuition.

In 2018, U21, a network of research-intensive universities, ranked the United States first in the world for breadth and quality of higher education, and 15th when GDP was a factor. As for public expenditures on higher education, the U.S. trails some other OECD (Organization for Cooperation and Development) nations but spends more per student than the OECD average, and more than all nations in combined public and private spending. As of 2018, student loan debt exceeded 1.5 trillion dollars.

Government and politics

Main articles: Federal government of the United States, Politics of the United States, State governments of the United States, and Local government in the United States

The United States Capitol,
where Congress meets:
the Senate, left; the House, right

The White House, residence and workplace of the U.S. President

The Supreme Court Building, where the nation's highest court sits

The United States is a federal republic of 50 states, a federal district, five territories and several uninhabited island possessions. It is the world's oldest surviving federation. It is a federal republic and a representative democracy "in which majority rule is tempered by minority rights protected by law." The U.S. ranked 25th on the Democracy Index in 2018. On Transparency International's 2019 Corruption Perceptions Index, its public sector position deteriorated from a score of 76 in 2015 to 69 in 2019.

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.

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. 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 writ of habeas corpus. The Constitution has been amended 27 times; the first ten amendments, which make up the Bill of Rights, and the Fourteenth Amendment form the central basis of Americans' individual rights. All laws and governmental procedures are subject to judicial review and any law ruled by the courts to be in violation of the Constitution is voided. The principle of judicial review, not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution, was established by the Supreme Court in Marbury v. Madison (1803) in a decision handed down by Chief Justice John Marshall.

The federal government comprises 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 (subject to congressional override), 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 voting members, each representing a congressional district for a two-year term. House seats are apportioned among the states by population. Each state then draws single-member districts to conform with the census apportionment. The District of Columbia and the five major U.S. territories each have one member of Congress—these members are not allowed to vote.

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 two years. The District of Columbia and the five major U.S. territories do not have senators. 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 to the states and the District of Columbia. The Supreme Court, led by the chief justice of the United States, has nine members, who serve for life.

Political divisions

Main articles: Political divisions of the United States, U.S. state, Territories of the United States, List of states and territories of the United States, and Indian reservation

Further information: Territorial evolution of the United States

Map of the United States showing the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the 5 major U.S. territories

The 50 states are the principal administrative divisions in the country. These are subdivided into counties or county equivalents and further divided into municipalities. The District of Columbia is a federal district that contains the capital of the United States, Washington, D.C. The states and the District of Columbia choose the president of the United States. Each state has presidential electors equal to the number of their representatives and senators in Congress; the District of Columbia has three (because of the 23rd Amendment). Territories of the United States such as Puerto Rico do not have presidential electors, and so people in those territories cannot vote for the president.

The United States also observes tribal sovereignty of the American Indian nations to a limited degree, as it does with the states' sovereignty. American Indians are U.S. citizens and tribal lands are subject to the jurisdiction of the U.S. Congress and the federal courts. Like the states they have a great deal of autonomy, but also like the states, tribes are not allowed to make war, engage in their own foreign relations, or print and issue currency.

Citizenship is granted at birth in all states, the District of Columbia, and all major U.S. territories except American Samoa.

Parties and elections

Main articles: Political parties in the United States, Elections in the United States, and Political ideologies in the United States

Donald Trump
45th President
since January 20, 2017

Mike Pence
48th Vice President
since January 20, 2017

The United States has operated under a two-party system for most of its history. For elective offices at most 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. The president and vice president are elected by the Electoral College.

In American political culture, the center-right Republican Party is considered "conservative" and the center-left Democratic Party is considered "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.

Republican Donald Trump, the winner of the 2016 presidential election, is serving as the 45th president of the United States. Leadership in the Senate includes vice president Mike Pence, president pro tempore Chuck Grassley, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. Leadership in the House includes Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, and Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.

Congressional leadership meeting with President Trump in 2019

In the 116th United States Congress, the House of Representatives is controlled by the Democratic Party and the Senate is controlled by the Republican Party, giving the U.S. a split Congress. The Senate consists of 53 Republicans and 45 Democrats with two Independents who caucus with the Democrats; the House consists of 233 Democrats, 196 Republicans, and 1 Libertarian. Of state governors, there are 26 Republicans and 24 Democrats. Among the D.C. mayor and the five territorial governors, there are four Democrats, one Republican, and one New Progressive.

Foreign relations

Main articles: Foreign relations of the United States and Foreign policy of the United States

The United Nations Headquarters was built in Midtown Manhattan in 1952.

The United States has an established structure of foreign relations. It is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. New York City is home to 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, Iran, North Korea, Bhutan, and the Republic of China (Taiwan) do not have formal diplomatic relations with the United States (although the U.S. still maintains unofficial relations with Bhutan and Taiwan). It is a member of the G7, G20, and OECD.

The United States has a "Special Relationship" with the United Kingdom and strong ties with India, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Japan, South Korea, Israel, and several European Union countries, including France, Italy, Germany, Spain and Poland. It works closely with fellow NATO members on military and security issues and 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. Colombia is traditionally considered by the United States as its most loyal ally in South America.

The U.S. exercises full international defense authority and responsibility for Micronesia, the Marshall Islands and Palau through the Compact of Free Association.

Government finance

See also: Taxation in the United States and United States federal budget

U.S. Government spending and revenue from 1792 to 2018

Taxation in the United States is progressive, and is levied at the federal, state, and local government levels. This includes taxes on income, payroll, property, sales, imports, estates, and gifts, as well as various fees. Taxation in the United States is based on citizenship, not residency. Both non-resident citizens and Green Card holders living abroad are taxed on their income irrespective of where they live or where their income is earned. The United States is one of the only countries in the world to do so.

In 2010 taxes collected by federal, state and municipal governments amounted to 24.8% of GDP. Based on CBO estimates, under 2013 tax law the top 1% will be paying the highest average tax rates since 1979, while other income groups will remain at historic lows. For 2018, the effective tax rate for the wealthiest 400 households was 23%, compared to 24.2% for the bottom half of U.S. households.

During fiscal year 2012, the federal government spent $3.54 trillion on a budget or cash basis. Major categories of fiscal year 2012 spending included: Medicare & Medicaid (23%), Social Security (22%), Defense Department (19%), non-defense discretionary (17%), other mandatory (13%) and interest (6%).

The total national debt of the United States was $23.201 trillion, or 107% of GDP, in the fourth quarter of 2019. By 2012, total federal debt had surpassed 100% of U.S. GDP. The U.S. has a credit rating of AA from Standard & Poor's, AAA from Fitch, and AAA from Moody's. The United States has the largest external debt in the world and the 34th largest government debt as a percentage of GDP in the world as of 2017; however, more recent estimates vary.

Military

Main article: United States Armed Forces

The nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS George Washington (CVN 73)

The president is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces and appoints its leaders, the secretary of defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Department of Defense administers five of the six service branches, which are made up of the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, and Space Force. The Coast Guard, also a branch of the armed forces, is administered by the Department of Homeland Security in peacetime and by the Department of the Navy in wartime. In 2019, all six branches of the U.S. Armed Forces reported 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 in the United States is voluntary, although conscription may occur in wartime through the Selective Service System. From 1940 until 1973, conscription was mandatory even during peacetime. Today, American forces can be rapidly deployed by the Air Force's large fleet of transport aircraft, the Navy's 11 active aircraft carriers, and Marine expeditionary units at sea with the Navy's Atlantic and Pacific fleets. The military operates about 800 bases and facilities abroad, and maintains deployments greater than 100 active duty personnel in 25 foreign countries.

Global presence of the United States military

The United States spent $649 billion on its military in 2019, 36% of global military spending. At 4.7% of GDP, the rate was the second-highest among the top 15 military spenders, after Saudi Arabia. Defense spending plays a major role in science and technology investment, with roughly half of U.S. federal research and development funded by the Department of Defense. Defense's share of the overall U.S. economy has generally declined in recent decades, from early Cold War peaks of 14.2% of GDP in 1953 and 69.5% of federal spending in 1954 to 4.7% of GDP and 18.8% of federal spending in 2011.

The country is one of the five recognized nuclear weapons states and one of nine countries to possess nuclear weapons. The United States possesses the second-largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world. More than 40% of the world's 14,000 nuclear weapons are held by the United States.

Law enforcement and crime

Main articles: Law enforcement in the United States and Crime in the United States

See also: Law of the United States, Human rights in the United States § Justice system, Incarceration in the United States, and Police brutality in the United States

The New York City Police Department is the nation's largest municipal law enforcement agency.

Law enforcement in the United States is primarily the responsibility of local police departments and sheriff's offices, 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, including protecting civil rights, national security and enforcing U.S. federal courts' rulings and federal laws. State courts conduct most criminal trials while federal courts handle certain designated crimes as well as certain appeals from the state criminal courts.

A cross-sectional analysis of the World Health Organization Mortality Database from 2010 showed that United States homicide rates "were 7.0 times higher than in other high-income countries, driven by a gun homicide rate that was 25.2 times higher." In 2016, the U.S. murder rate was 5.4 per 100,000.

Total incarceration in the United States by year

The United States has the highest documented incarceration rate and largest prison population in the world. As of 2020, the Prison Policy Initiative reported that there were some 2.3 million people incarcerated. According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the majority of inmates held in federal prisons are convicted of drug offenses. The imprisonment rate for all prisoners sentenced to more than a year in state or federal facilities is 478 per 100,000 in 2013. About 9% of prisoners are held in privatized prisons, a practice beginning in the 1980s and a subject of contention.

Capital punishment is sanctioned in the United States for certain federal and military crimes, and at the state level in 28 states, though three states have moratoriums on carrying out the penalty imposed by their governors. In 2019, the country had the sixth-highest number of executions in the world, following China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Egypt. No executions took place from 1967 to 1977, owing in part to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling striking down the practice. Since the decision, however, there have been more than 1,500 executions. In recent years the number of executions and presence of capital punishment statute on whole has trended down nationally, with several states recently abolishing the penalty.

See also: Capital punishment in the United States

Economy

Main article: Economy of the United States

See also: Economic history of the United States, List of companies of the United States by state, List of largest companies in the United States by revenue, and Lists of companies

Economic indicators
Nominal GDP	$20.66 trillion (Q3 2018)
Real GDP growth	3.5% (Q3 2018)
	2.1% (2017)
CPI inflation	2.2% (November 2018)
Employment-to-population ratio	60.6% (November 2018)
Unemployment	3.7% (November 2018)
Labor force participation rate	62.9% (November 2018)
Total public debt	$21.85 trillion (November 2018)
Household net worth	$109.0 trillion (Q3 2018)

According to the International Monetary Fund, the U.S. GDP of $16.8 trillion constitutes 24% of the gross world product at market exchange rates and over 19% of the gross world product at purchasing power parity. The United States is the largest importer of goods and second-largest exporter, though exports per capita are relatively low. In 2010, the total U.S. trade deficit was $635 billion. Canada, China, Mexico, Japan, and Germany are its top trading partners.

From 1983 to 2008, U.S. real compounded annual GDP growth was 3.3%, compared to a 2.3% weighted average for the rest of the G7. The country ranks ninth in the world in nominal GDP per capita and sixth in GDP per capita at PPP. The U.S. dollar is the world's primary reserve currency.

The New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street is the world's largest stock exchange (per market capitalization of its listed companies) at $23.1 trillion as of April 2018.

In 2009, the private sector was estimated to constitute 86.4% of the economy. While its economy has reached a postindustrial level of development, the United States remains an industrial power. In August 2010, the American labor force consisted of 154.1 million people (50%). With 21.2 million people, government is the leading field of employment. The largest private employment sector is health care and social assistance, with 16.4 million people. It has a smaller welfare state and redistributes less income through government action than most European nations.

The United States is the only advanced economy that does not guarantee its workers paid vacation and is one of a few countries in the world without paid family leave as a legal right. 74% of full-time American workers get paid sick leave, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, although only 24% of part-time workers get the same benefits. In 2009, the United States had the third-highest workforce productivity per person in the world, behind Luxembourg and Norway.

Science and technology

Main articles: Science and technology in the United States and Science policy of the United States

Buzz Aldrin on the Moon, 1969

The United States has been a leader in technological innovation since the late 19th century and scientific research since the mid-20th century. Methods for producing interchangeable parts were developed by the U.S. War Department by the Federal Armories during the first half of the 19th century. This technology, along with the establishment of a machine tool industry, enabled the U.S. to have large-scale manufacturing of sewing machines, bicycles, and other items in the late 19th century and became known as the American system of manufacturing. Factory electrification in the early 20th century and introduction of the assembly line and other labor-saving techniques created the system of mass production. In the 21st century, approximately two-thirds of research and development funding comes from the private sector. The United States leads the world in scientific research papers and impact factor.

In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell was awarded the first U.S. patent for the telephone. Thomas Edison's research laboratory, one of the first of its kind, developed the phonograph, the first long-lasting light bulb, and the first viable movie camera. The latter led to emergence of the worldwide entertainment industry. In the early 20th century, the automobile companies of Ransom E. Olds and Henry Ford popularized the assembly line. The Wright brothers, in 1903, made the first sustained and controlled heavier-than-air powered flight.

The rise of fascism and Nazism in the 1920s and 30s led many European scientists, including Albert Einstein, Enrico Fermi, and John von Neumann, to immigrate to the United States. During World War II, the Manhattan Project developed nuclear weapons, ushering in the Atomic Age, while the Space Race produced rapid advances in rocketry, materials science, and aeronautics.

The invention of the transistor in the 1950s, a key active component in practically all modern electronics, led to many technological developments and a significant expansion of the U.S. technology industry. This, in turn, led to the establishment of many new technology companies and regions around the country such as Silicon Valley in California. Advancements by American microprocessor companies such as Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Intel, along with both computer software and hardware companies such as Adobe Systems, Apple Inc., IBM, Microsoft, and Sun Microsystems, created and popularized the personal computer. The ARPANET was developed in the 1960s to meet Defense Department requirements, and became the first of a series of networks which evolved into the Internet.

Income, poverty and wealth

Further information: Income in the United States, Poverty in the United States, Affluence in the United States, United States counties by per capita income, and Income inequality in the United States

Accounting for 4.24% of the global population, Americans collectively possess 29.4% of the world's total wealth, the largest percentage of any country. Americans also make up roughly half of the world's population of millionaires. The Global Food Security Index ranked the U.S. number one for food affordability and overall food security in March 2013. Americans on average have more than twice as much living space per dwelling and per person as EU residents. For 2017 the United Nations Development Programme ranked the United States 13th among 189 countries in its Human Development Index (HDI) and 25th among 151 countries in its inequality-adjusted HDI (IHDI).

Wealth, like income and taxes, is highly concentrated; the richest 10% of the adult population possess 72% of the country's household wealth, while the bottom half possess only 2%. According to the Federal Reserve, the top 1% controlled 38.6% of the country's wealth in 2016. In 2017, Forbes found that just three individuals (Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett and Bill Gates) held more money than the bottom half of the population. According to a 2018 study by the OECD, the United States has a larger percentage of low-income workers than almost any other developed nation, largely because of a weak collective bargaining system and lack of government support for at-risk workers. The top one percent of income-earners accounted for 52 percent of the income gains from 2009 to 2015, where income is defined as market income excluding government transfers.

Wealth inequality in the U.S. increased between 1989 and 2013.

After years of stagnation, median household income reached a record high in 2016 following two consecutive years of record growth. Income inequality remains at record highs however, with the top fifth of earners taking home more than half of all overall income. The rise in the share of total annual income received by the top one percent, which has more than doubled from nine percent in 1976 to 20 percent in 2011, has significantly affected income inequality, leaving the United States with one of the widest income distributions among OECD nations. The extent and relevance of income inequality is a matter of debate.

There were about 567,715 sheltered and unsheltered homeless persons in the U.S. in January 2019, with almost two-thirds staying in an emergency shelter or transitional housing program. In 2011, 16.7 million children lived in food-insecure households, about 35% more than 2007 levels, though only 845,000 U.S. children (1.1%) saw reduced food intake or disrupted eating patterns at some point during the year, and most cases were not chronic. As of June 2018, 40 million people, roughly 12.7% of the U.S. population, were living in poverty, including 13.3 million children. Of those impoverished, 18.5 million live in deep poverty (family income below one-half of the poverty threshold) and over five million live "in 'Third World' conditions". In 2017, the U.S. states or territories with the lowest and highest poverty rates were New Hampshire (7.6%) and American Samoa (65%), respectively. The economic impact and mass unemployment caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has raised fears of a mass eviction crisis, with an analysis by the Aspen Institute indicating that between 30 and 40 million people are at risk for eviction by the end of 2020.

Infrastructure

Transportation

Main article: Transportation in the United States

The Interstate Highway System, which extends 46,876 miles (75,440 km)

Personal transportation is dominated by automobiles, which operate on a network of 4 million miles (6.4 million kilometers) of public roads. The United States has the world's second-largest automobile market, and has the highest vehicle ownership per capita in the world, with 816.4 vehicles per 1,000 Americans (2014). In 2017, there were 255,009,283 non-two wheel motor vehicles, or about 910 vehicles per 1,000 people.

The civil airline industry is entirely privately owned and has been largely deregulated since 1978, while most major airports are publicly owned. The three largest airlines in the world by passengers carried are U.S.-based; American Airlines is number one after its 2013 acquisition by US Airways. Of the world's 50 busiest passenger airports, 16 are in the United States, including the busiest, Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport.

Energy

Further information: Energy policy of the United States

The United States energy market is about 29,000 terawatt hours per year. In 2005, 40% of this energy came from petroleum, 23% from coal, and 22% from natural gas. The remainder was supplied by nuclear and renewable energy sources.

Since 2007, the total greenhouse gas emissions by the United States are the second highest by country, exceeded only by China. The United States has historically been the world's largest producer of greenhouse gases, and greenhouse gas emissions per capita remain high.

Culture

Main article: Culture of the United States

For many immigrants, the Statue of Liberty was their first view of the United States. It signified new opportunities in life, and thus the statue is an iconic symbol of the American Dream as well as its ideals.

The United States is home to many cultures and a wide variety of ethnic groups, traditions, and values. Aside from the Native American, Native Hawaiian, and Native Alaskan populations, nearly all Americans or their ancestors immigrated within the past five centuries. 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.

Americans have traditionally been characterized by a strong work ethic, competitiveness, and individualism, as well as a unifying belief in an "American creed" emphasizing liberty, equality, private property, democracy, rule of law, and a preference for limited government. Americans are extremely charitable by global standards: according to a 2006 British study, Americans gave 1.67% of GDP to charity, more than any other nation studied.

The American Dream, or the perception that Americans enjoy high social mobility, plays a key role in attracting immigrants. Whether this perception is accurate has been a topic of debate. While 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. Americans tend to greatly value socioeconomic achievement, but being ordinary or average is also generally seen as a positive attribute.

Literature, philosophy, and visual art

Main articles: American literature, American philosophy, Architecture of the United States, and Visual art of the United States

Mark Twain, American author and humorist

In the 18th and early 19th centuries, American art and literature took most of its cues from Europe. Writers such as Washington Irving, 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), F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (1925) and Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird (1960)—may be dubbed the "Great American Novel."

Thirteen U.S. citizens have won the Nobel Prize in Literature. William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck are often named among 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, and later Noam Chomsky, brought analytic philosophy to the fore of American philosophical academia. John Rawls and Robert Nozick also 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, individualistic styles. 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. Americans have long been important in the modern artistic medium of photography, with major photographers including Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, Edward Weston, and Ansel Adams.

Food

Main article: Cuisine of the United States

Roasted turkey is a traditional menu item of an American Thanksgiving dinner.

Early settlers were introduced by Native Americans to such indigenous, non-European foods as turkey, sweet potatoes, corn, squash, and maple syrup. They and later immigrants combined these with foods they had known, such as wheat flour, beef, and milk to create a distinctive American cuisine.

Homegrown foods are part of a shared national menu on one of America's most popular holidays, Thanksgiving, when some Americans make traditional foods to celebrate the occasion.

The American fast food industry, the world's largest, pioneered the drive-through format in the 1940s. 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 drink three times as much coffee as tea. Marketing by U.S. industries is largely responsible for making orange juice and milk ubiquitous breakfast beverages.

Music

Main articles: Music of the United States and American classical music

One of America's early composers was a man named William Billings who, born in Boston, composed patriotic hymns in the 1770s. From the 1800s John Philip Sousa is regarded as one of America's greatest composers.

Although little known at the time, Charles Ives's work of the 1910s established him as the first major U.S. composer in the classical tradition, while experimentalists such as Henry Cowell and John Cage created a distinctive American approach to classical composition. Aaron Copland and George Gershwin developed a new synthesis of popular and classical music.

The rhythmic and lyrical styles of African-American music have deeply influenced American music at large, distinguishing it from European and African 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. Rock bands such as Metallica, the Eagles, and Aerosmith are among the highest grossing in worldwide sales. 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, as have contemporary musical artists such as Katy Perry, Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, Britney Spears, Mariah Carey, Beyoncé, Jay-Z, Eminem, and Kanye West.

Cinema

Main article: Cinema of the United States

The Hollywood Sign in Los Angeles, California

Hollywood, a northern district of Los Angeles, California, is one of the leaders in motion picture production. The world's first commercial motion picture exhibition was given in New York City in 1894, using Thomas Edison's Kinetoscope. Since the early 20th century, the U.S. film industry has largely been based in and around Hollywood, although in the 21st century an increasing number of films are not made there, and film companies have been subject to the forces of globalization.

Director D. W. Griffith, the top American filmmaker during the silent film period, was central to the development of film grammar, and producer/entrepreneur Walt Disney was a leader in both animated film and movie merchandising. Directors such as John Ford redefined the image of the American Old West, and, like others such as John Huston, broadened the possibilities of cinema with location shooting. The industry enjoyed its golden years, in what is commonly referred to as the "Golden Age of Hollywood", from the early sound period until the early 1960s, with screen actors such as John Wayne and Marilyn Monroe becoming iconic figures. In the 1970s, "New Hollywood" or the "Hollywood Renaissance" was defined by grittier films influenced by French and Italian realist pictures of the post-war period. In more recent times, directors such as Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and James Cameron have gained renown for their blockbuster films, often characterized by high production costs and earnings.

Notable films topping the American Film Institute's AFI 100 list include Orson Welles's Citizen Kane (1941), which is frequently cited as the greatest film of all time, Casablanca (1942), The Godfather (1972), Gone with the Wind (1939), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), The Wizard of Oz (1939), The Graduate (1967), On the Waterfront (1954), Schindler's List (1993), Singin' in the Rain (1952), It's a Wonderful Life (1946) and Sunset Boulevard (1950). The Academy Awards, popularly known as the Oscars, have been held annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences since 1929, and the Golden Globe Awards have been held annually since January 1944.

Sports

Main article: Sports in the United States

The most popular sports in the U.S. are American football, basketball, baseball and ice hockey.

American football is by several measures the most popular spectator sport; the National Football League (NFL) has the highest average attendance of any sports league in the world, and the Super Bowl is watched by tens of millions globally. Baseball has been regarded as the U.S. national sport since the late 19th century, with Major League Baseball (MLB) being the top league. Basketball and ice hockey are the country's next two leading professional team sports, with the top leagues being the National Basketball Association (NBA) and the National Hockey League (NHL). College football and basketball attract large audiences. In soccer (a sport that has gained a footing in the United States since the mid-1990s), the country hosted the 1994 FIFA World Cup, the men's national soccer team qualified for ten World Cups and the women's team has won the FIFA Women's World Cup four times; Major League Soccer is the sport's highest league in the United States (featuring 23 American and three Canadian teams). The market for professional sports in the United States is roughly $69 billion, roughly 50% larger than that of all of Europe, the Middle East, and Africa combined.

Eight Olympic Games have taken place in the United States. The 1904 Summer Olympics in St. Louis, Missouri, were the first ever Olympic Games held outside of Europe. As of 2017, the United States has won 2,522 medals at the Summer Olympic Games, more than any other country, and 305 in the Winter Olympic Games, the second most behind Norway. While most major U.S. sports such as baseball and American football have evolved out of European practices, basketball, volleyball, skateboarding, and snowboarding are American inventions, some of which have become popular worldwide. Lacrosse and surfing arose from Native American and Native Hawaiian activities that predate Western contact. The most watched individual sports are golf and auto racing, particularly NASCAR.

Mass media

Further information: Media of the United States

See also: Newspapers in the United States, Television in the United States, Internet in the United States, Radio in the United States, List of United States magazines, and Video games in the United States

The headquarters of the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City

The four major broadcasters in the U.S. are the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), American Broadcasting Company (ABC), and Fox Broadcasting Company (FOX). The four major broadcast television networks are all commercial entities. Cable television offers hundreds of channels catering to a variety of niches. Americans listen to radio programming, also largely commercial, on average just over two-and-a-half hours a day.

In 1998, the number of U.S. commercial radio stations had grown to 4,793 AM stations and 5,662 FM stations. In addition, there are 1,460 public radio stations. Most of these stations are run by universities and public authorities for educational purposes and are financed by public or private funds, subscriptions, and corporate underwriting. Much public-radio broadcasting is supplied by NPR. NPR was incorporated in February 1970 under the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967; its television counterpart, PBS, was created by the same legislation. As of September 30, 2014, there are 15,433 licensed full-power radio stations in the U.S. according to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

Well-known newspapers include The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and USA Today. Although the cost of publishing has increased over the years, the price of newspapers has generally remained low, forcing newspapers to rely more on advertising revenue and on articles provided by a major wire service, such as the Associated Press or Reuters, for their national and world coverage. With very few exceptions, all the newspapers in the U.S. are privately owned, either by large chains such as Gannett or McClatchy, which own dozens or even hundreds of newspapers; by small chains that own a handful of papers; or in a situation that is increasingly rare, by individuals or families. Major cities often have "alternative weeklies" to complement the mainstream daily papers, such as New York City's The Village Voice or Los Angeles' LA Weekly. Major cities may also support a local business journal, trade papers relating to local industries, and papers for local ethnic and social groups. Aside from web portals and search engines, the most popular websites are Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia, Yahoo!, eBay, Amazon, and Twitter.

More than 800 publications are produced in Spanish, the second most commonly used language in the United States behind English.

See also

• Index of United States-related articles
• Lists of U.S. state topics
• Outline of the United States

Further reading

• Acharya, Viral V.; Cooley, Thomas F.; Richardson, Matthew P.; Walter, Ingo (2010). Regulating Wall Street: The Dodd-Frank Act and the New Architecture of Global Finance. Wiley. p. 592. ISBN 978-0-470-76877-8.
• Baptist, Edward E. (2014). The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism. Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-465-00296-2.
• Barth, James; Jahera, John (2010). "US Enacts Sweeping Financial Reform Legislation". Journal of Financial Economic Policy. 2 (3): 192–195. doi:10.1108/17576381011085412.
• Berkin, Carol; Miller, Christopher L.; Cherny, Robert W.; Gormly, James L. (2007). Making America: A History of the United States, Volume I: To 1877. Cengage Learning. p. 75. ISBN 978-0-618-99485-4.
• Bianchine, Peter J.; Russo, Thomas A. (1992). "The Role of Epidemic Infectious Diseases in the Discovery of America". Allergy and Asthma Proceedings. 13 (5): 225–232. doi:10.2500/108854192778817040. PMID 1483570.
• Blakeley, Ruth (2009). State Terrorism and Neoliberalism: The North in the South. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-68617-4.
• Boyer, Paul S.; Clark Jr., Clifford E.; Kett, Joseph F.; Salisbury, Neal; Sitkoff, Harvard; Woloch, Nancy (2007). The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People. Cengage Learning. p. 588. ISBN 978-0-618-80161-9.
• Brokenshire, Brad (1993). Washington State Place Names. Caxton Press. p. 49. ISBN 978-0-87004-562-2. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Calloway, Colin G. (1998). New Worlds for All: Indians, Europeans, and the Remaking of Early America. JHU Press. p. 229. ISBN 978-0-8018-5959-5.
• Cobarrubias, Juan (1983). Progress in Language Planning: International Perspectives. Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 978-90-279-3358-4. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Cowper, Marcus (2011). National Geographic History Book: An Interactive Journey. National Geographic Society. ISBN 978-1-4262-0679-5. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Davis, Kenneth C. (1996). Don't know much about the Civil War. New York: William Marrow and Co. p. 518. ISBN 978-0-688-11814-3.
• Daynes, Byron W.; Sussman, Glen (2010). White House Politics and the Environment: Franklin D. Roosevelt to George W. Bush. Texas A&M University Press. p. 320. ISBN 978-1-60344-254-1. OCLC 670419432. Presidential environmental policies, 1933–2009
• Erlandson, Jon M; Rick, Torben C; Vellanoweth, Rene L (2008). A Canyon Through Time: Archaeology, History, and Ecology of the Tecolote Canyon Area, Santa Barbara County. California: University of Utah Press. ISBN 978-0-87480-879-7. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Fagan, Brian M. (2016). Ancient Lives: An Introduction to Archaeology and Prehistory. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-35027-9. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Feldstein, Sylvan G.; Fabozzi, Frank J. (2011). The Handbook of Municipal Bonds. John Wiley & Sons. p. 1376. ISBN 978-1-118-04494-0.
• Ferguson, Thomas; Rogers, Joel (1986). "The Myth of America's Turn to the Right". The Atlantic. 257 (5): 43–53. Retrieved March 11, 2013.
• Fladmark, K.R. (2017). "Routes: Alternate Migration Corridors for Early Man in North America". American Antiquity. 44 (1): 55–69. doi:10.2307/279189. ISSN 0002-7316. JSTOR 279189. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Flannery, Tim (2015). The Eternal Frontier: An Ecological History of North America and Its Peoples. Open Road Grove/Atlantic. ISBN 978-0-8021-9109-0. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Fraser, Steve; Gerstle, Gary (1989). The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order: 1930–1980. American History: Political science. Princeton University Press. p. 311. ISBN 978-0-691-00607-9.
• Gaddis, John Lewis (1972). The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941–1947. Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-12239-9. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Gelo, Daniel J. (2018). Indians of the Great Plains. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1-351-71812-7. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Greg, Percy (1892). History of the United States from the Foundation of Virginia to the Reconstruction of the Union. West, Johnston & Company. p. 276. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• García, Ofelia (2011). Bilingual Education in the 21st Century: A Global Perspective. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-1-4443-5978-7. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Gold, Susan Dudley (2006). United States V. Amistad: Slave Ship Mutiny. Marshall Cavendish. p. 144. ISBN 978-0-7614-2143-6.
• Gordon, John Steele (2004). An Empire of Wealth: The Epic History of American Economic Power. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-009362-4.
• Graebner, Norman A.; Burns, Richard Dean; Siracusa, Joseph M. (2008). Reagan, Bush, Gorbachev: Revisiting the End of the Cold War. Praeger Security International Series. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 180. ISBN 978-0-313-35241-6.
• Haines, Michael Robert; Haines, Michael R.; Steckel, Richard H. (2000). A Population History of North America. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-49666-7. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Haymes, Stephen; Vidal de Haymes, Maria; Miller, Reuben, eds. (2014). The Routledge Handbook of Poverty in the United States. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-67344-0.
• Haviland, William A.; Walrath, Dana; Prins, Harald E.L. (2013). Evolution and Prehistory: The Human Challenge. Cengage Learning. ISBN 978-1-285-06141-2. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Hoopes, Townsend; Brinkley, Douglas (1997). FDR and the Creation of the U.N. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-08553-2. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Ingersoll, Thomas N. (2016). The Loyalist Problem in Revolutionary New England. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-107-12861-3. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Inghilleri, Moira (2016). Translation and Migration. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1-315-39980-5. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Jacobs, Lawrence R. (2010). Health Care Reform and American Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know: What Everyone Needs to Know. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-978142-3.
• Johnson, Paul (1997). A History of the American People. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-195213-5. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Kurian, George T., ed. (2001). Encyclopedia of American studies. New York: Grolier Educational. ISBN 978-0-7172-9222-6. OCLC 46343385.
• Joseph, Paul (2016). The Sage Encyclopedia of War: Social Science Perspectives. Sage Publications. ISBN 978-1-4833-5988-5. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Kessel, William B.; Wooster, Robert (2005). Encyclopedia of Native American Wars and Warfare. Facts on File library of American History. Infobase Publishing. p. 398. ISBN 978-0-8160-3337-9.
• Kidder, David S.; Oppenheim, Noah D. (2007). The Intellectual Devotional: American History: Revive Your Mind, Complete Your Education, and Converse Confidently about Our Nation's Past. Rodale. ISBN 978-1-86386-744-6. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Kruse, Kevin M. (2015). One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America. Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-465-04949-3.
• Leckie, Robert (1990). None died in vain: The Saga of the American Civil War. New York: Harper-Collins. p. 682. ISBN 978-0-06-016280-1.
• Lockard, Craig (2010). Societies, Networks, and Transitions, Volume B: From 600 to 1750. Cengage Learning. ISBN 978-1-111-79083-7. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Martinez, Donna; Bordeaux, Jennifer L. Williams (2016). 50 Events That Shaped American Indian History: An Encyclopedia of the American Mosaic [2 volumes]. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-1-4408-3577-3. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Martinez, Donna; Sage, Grace; Ono, Azusa (2016). Urban American Indians: Reclaiming Native Space: Reclaiming Native Space. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-1-4408-3208-6. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Martone, Eric (2016). Italian Americans: The History and Culture of a People. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-1-61069-995-2. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Leffler, Melvyn P. (2010). "The emergence of an American grand strategy, 1945–1952". In Westad, Odd Arne (ed.). The Cambridge History of the Cold War. Vol. 1: Origins. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 67–89. ISBN 978-0-521-83719-4. OCLC 309835719. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Lemon, James T. (1987). "Colonial America in the 18th Century" (PDF). In Mitchell, Robert D.; Groves, Paul A. (eds.). North America: the historical geography of a changing continent. Rowman & Littlefield. Archived from the original (PDF) on January 23, 2013.
• Lien, Arnold Johnson (1913). Studies in History, Economics, and Public Law. Vol. 54. New York: Columbia University. p. 604.
• Weierman, Karen Woods (2005). One Nation, One Blood: Interracial Marriage In American Fiction, Scandal, And Law, 1820–1870. University of Massachusetts Press. p. 214. ISBN 978-1-55849-483-1.
• Levenstein, Harvey (2003). Revolution at the Table: The Transformation of the American Diet. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-23439-0.
• Mann, Kaarin (2007). "Interracial Marriage in Early America: Motivation and the Colonial Project" (PDF). Michigan Journal of History (Fall). Archived from the original (PDF) on May 15, 2013.
• Meltzer, David J. (2009). First Peoples in a New World: Colonizing Ice Age America. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-94315-5. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• The New York Times (2007). The New York Times Guide to Essential Knowledge: A Desk Reference for the Curious Mind (2nd ed.). St. Martin's Press. ISBN 978-0-312-37659-8. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Mostert, Mary (2005). The Threat of Anarchy Leads to the Constitution of the United States. CTR Publishing, Inc. ISBN 978-0-9753851-4-2. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Onuf, Peter S. (2010). The Origins of the Federal Republic: Jurisdictional Controversies in the United States, 1775–1787. University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 978-0-8122-0038-6. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Perdue, Theda; Green, Michael D (2005). The Columbia Guide to American Indians of the Southeast. Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-50602-1. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Price, David A. (2003). Love and Hate in Jamestown: John Smith, Pocahontas, and the Start of a New Nation. Random House. ISBN 978-0-307-42670-3. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Quirk, Joel (2011). The Anti-Slavery Project: From the Slave Trade to Human Trafficking. University of Pennsylvania Press. p. 344. ISBN 978-0-8122-4333-8.
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• Rausch, David A. (1994). Native American Voices. Grand Rapids: Baker Books. p. 180. ISBN 978-0-8010-7773-9.
• Remini, Robert V. (2007). The House: The History of the House of Representatives. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-134111-3. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Richter, Daniel K.; Merrell, James H., eds. (2003). Beyond the covenant chain : the Iroquois and their neighbors in Indian North America, 1600–1800. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. ISBN 978-0-271-02299-4. OCLC 51306167.
• Ripper, Jason (2008). American Stories: To 1877. M.E. Sharpe. p. 299. ISBN 978-0-7656-2903-6.
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• Samuel, Bunford (1920). Secession and Constitutional Liberty: In which is Shown the Right of a Nation to Secede from a Compact of Federation and that Such Right is Necessary to Constitutional Liberty and a Surety of Union. Neale publishing Company. p. 323. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Savage, Candace (2011). Prairie: A Natural History. Greystone Books. ISBN 978-1-55365-899-3. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Schneider, Dorothy; Schneider, Carl J. (2007). Slavery in America. Infobase Publishing. p. 554. ISBN 978-1-4381-0813-1.
• Schultz, David Andrew (2009). Encyclopedia of the United States Constitution. Infobase Publishing. p. 904. ISBN 978-1-4381-2677-7.
• Sider, Sandra (2007). Handbook to Life in Renaissance Europe. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-533084-7. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Simonson, Peter (2010). Refiguring Mass Communication: A History. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. ISBN 978-0-252-07705-0. He held high the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the nation's unofficial motto, e pluribus unum, even as he was recoiling from the party system in which he had long participated.
• Smith, Andrew F. (2004). The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 131–132. ISBN 978-0-19-515437-5.
• Soss, Joe (2010). Hacker, Jacob S.; Mettler, Suzanne (eds.). Remaking America: Democracy and Public Policy in an Age of Inequality. Russell Sage Foundation. ISBN 978-1-61044-694-5.
• Stannard, David E. (1993). American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-508557-0.
• Tadman, Michael (2000). "The Demographic Cost of Sugar: Debates on Slave Societies and Natural Increase in the Americas". American Historical Review. 105 (5): 1534–1575. doi:10.2307/2652029. JSTOR 2652029.
• Taylor, Alan (2002). Eric Foner (ed.). American Colonies: The Settling of North America. New York: Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-670-87282-4.
• Thornton, Russell (1987). American Indian Holocaust and Survival: A Population History Since 1492. Civilization of the American Indian. Vol. 186. University of Oklahoma Press. p. 49. ISBN 978-0-8061-2220-5. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Thornton, Russell (1998). Studying Native America: Problems and Prospects. Univ of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 978-0-299-16064-7. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Vaughan, Alden T. (1999). New England Encounters: Indians and Euroamericans Ca. 1600–1850. North Eastern University Press. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Volo, James M.; Volo, Dorothy Denneen (2007). Family Life in Native America. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-0-313-33795-6. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Walton, Gary M.; Rockoff, Hugh (2009). History of the American Economy. Cengage Learning. ISBN 978-0-324-78662-0.
• Waters, M.R.; Stafford, T W. (2007). "Redefining the Age of Clovis: Implications for the Peopling of the Americas". Science. 315 (5815): 1122–1126. Bibcode:2007Sci...315.1122W. doi:10.1126/science.1137166. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 17322060. S2CID 23205379. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Weiss, Edith Brown; Jacobson, Harold Karan (2000). Engaging Countries: Strengthening Compliance with International Environmental Accords. MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-73132-4. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Williams, Daniel K. (2012). "Questioning Conservatism's Ascendancy: A Reexamination of the Rightward Shift in Modern American Politics" (PDF). Reviews in American History. 40 (2): 325–331. doi:10.1353/rah.2012.0043. S2CID 96461510. Archived from the original (PDF) on March 17, 2013. Retrieved March 11, 2013.
• Wilson, Wendy S.; Thompson, Lloyd M. (1997). Native Americans: An Interdisciplinary Unit on Converging Cultures. Walch Publishing. ISBN 978-0-8251-3332-9. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Winchester, Simon (2013). The men who United the States. Harper Collins. pp. 198, 216, 251, 253. ISBN 978-0-06-207960-2.
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Internet sources

• "Country Profile: United States of America", BBC News, April 22, 2008. Retrieved on May 18, 2008. 
• Cohen, Eliot A. (July–August 2004). History and the Hyperpower. Retrieved on July 14, 2006.
• Slavery and the Slave Trade in Rhode Island.
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• Early History, Native Americans, and Early Settlers in Mercer County. Mercer County Historical Society (2005). Archived from the original on March 10, 2005.
• Hayes, Nick. "Looking back 20 years: Who deserves credit for ending the Cold War?", November 6, 2009. Retrieved on March 11, 2013. 
• 59e. The End of the Cold War. Independence Hall Association. Retrieved on March 10, 2013.
• Levy, Peter B. (1996). Encyclopedia of the Reagan-Bush Years. ABC-CLIO. p. 442. ISBN 978-0-313-29018-3.
• U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts selected: United States. U.S. Census Bureau (2016). Retrieved on September 9, 2017.
• Wallander, Celeste A. (2003). "Western Policy and the Demise of the Soviet Union". Journal of Cold War Studies. 5 (4): 137–177. doi:10.1162/152039703322483774. S2CID 57560487.
• Gilens, Martin & Page, Benjamin I. (2014). "Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens" (PDF). Perspectives on Politics. 12 (3): 564–581. doi:10.1017/S1537592714001595. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

External links

• Template:CIA World Factbook link
• United States, from the BBC News
• Key Development Forecasts for the United States from International Futures

Government

• Official U.S. Government Web Portal Gateway to government sites
• House Official site of the United States House of Representatives
• Senate Official site of the United States Senate
• White House Official site of the president of the United States
• [[[:Template:SCOTUS URL]] Supreme Court] Official site of the Supreme Court of the United States

History

• Historical Documents Collected by the National Center for Public Policy Research
• U.S. National Mottos: History and Constitutionality Analysis by the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance
• USA Collected links to historical data

Maps

• National Atlas of the United States Official maps from the U.S. Department of the Interior
• Template:Wikiatlas
• Template:Osmrelation-inline
• Measure of America A variety of mapped information relating to health, education, income, and demographics for the U.S.

Photos

• Photos of the USA