UNITED STATES

HISTORY

The United States of America is located in the middle of the North American continent, with Canada to the north and the United Mexican States to the south. The United States ranges from the Atlantic Ocean on the nation's east coast to the Pacific Ocean bordering the west, and also includes the state of Hawaii, a series of islands located in the Pacific Ocean, the state of Alaska located in the northwestern part of the continent above the Yukon, and numerous other holdings and territories.
The first known inhabitants of the area now known as the United States are believed to have arrived over a period of several thousand years beginning approximately 20,000 years ago by crossing the Bering land bridge into Alaska. The first solid evidence of these cultures settling in what would become the US begins as early as 15,000 years ago with the Sandia and Clovis tribes.
Relatively little is known of these early settlers compared to the Europeans who colonized the area after the first voyage of navigator Christopher Columbus in 1492 for Spain. Columbus' men were also the first documented Old Worlders to land in the territory of the United States when they arrived in Puerto Rico during their second voyage in 1493. The first European known to set foot in the continental U.S. was Juan Ponce de León, who arrived in Florida in 1513, though there is some evidence suggesting that he may have been preceded by John Cabot in 1497.

Government and politics

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

The north side of the White House, home and work place of the U.S. president
The federal government is composed of three branches:
Legislative: The bicameral Congress, made up of the Senate and the House of Representatives makes federal law, declares war, approves treaties, has the power of the purse, and has the rarely used power of impeachment, by which it can remove sitting members of the government.
Executive: The president is the commander-in-chief of the military, can veto legislative bills before they become law, and appoints the Cabinet and other officers, who administer and enforce federal laws and policies.
Judiciary: The Supreme Court and lower federal courts, whose judges are appointed by the president with Senate approval, interpret laws and can overturn laws they deem unconstitutional.
The House of Representatives has 435 members, each representing a congressional district for a two-year term. House seats are apportioned among the fifty states by population every tenth year. As of the 2000 census, seven states have the minimum of one representative, while California, the most populous state, has fifty-three. Each state has two senators, elected at-large to six-year terms; one third of Senate seats are up for election every second year. The president serves a four-year term and may be elected to the office no more than twice. The Supreme Court, led by the Chief Justice of the United States, has nine members, who serve for life.
Politics in the United States have operated under a two-party system for virtually all of the country's history. Since the general election of 1856, the two dominant parties have been the Democratic Party, founded in 1824 (though its roots trace back to 1792), and the Republican Party, founded in 1854. The Senate has two independent members—one is a former Democratic incumbent, the other is a self-described socialist; every member of the House is a Democrat or Republican. An overwhelming majority of state and local officials are also either Democrats or Republicans. 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 percent of the popular vote. For elective offices at all levels, state-administered primary elections are held to choose the major party nominees for subsequent general elections.
Within American political culture, the Republican Party is considered "center-right" or conservative and the Democratic Party is considered "center-left" or liberal, but members of both parties have a wide range of views. In the presidential election of 2000, the Democratic candidate, incumbent vice president Al Gore, received a larger share of the popular vote than the Republican candidate, Texas governor George W. Bush. The president is not elected by direct vote, however, but by an indirect electoral college system in which the determining votes are apportioned by state. The disputed vote count in Florida left the election unresolved for over a month until a Supreme Court decision effectively awarded the presidency to Bush. In 2004, Bush won reelection over Democratic challenger Senator John Kerry. Following the 2006 midterm elections, the Democratic Party holds a majority of seats in both the House and Senate for the first time since the election of 1994. In an August 2007 poll, 36 percent of Americans described themselves as "conservative," 34 percent as "moderate," and 25 percent as "liberal." On the other hand, a plurality of adults, 35.9 percent, identify as Democrats, 32.9 percent as independents, and 31.3 percent as Republicans. The states of the Northeast, Great Lakes, and the West Coast are relatively liberal-leaning—they are known in political parlance as "blue states." The "red states" of the South and the Rocky Mountains lean conservative. The academic realm diverges widely from the general political balance: 72 percent of college faculty members identify as liberal and only 15 percent as conservative. The military is considerably more conservative than the general public, with 46 percent of active personnel identifying as Republican in December 2006, down from 60 percent in 2004.

Economy of the United States

The United States economy has the world's largest gross domestic product (GDP), $13.21 trillion in 2006. It is a mixed economy where corporations and other private firms make the majority of microeconomic decisions while being regulated by the government.
The US economy maintains a high per capita GDP, which although not the world's highest, compares favorably to that of all other major economies. The economy also has a reasonably high GDP growth rate, a low unemployment rate, and high levels of research and development investment. Economic concerns include national debt, external debt, entitlement liabilities, consumer debt, a low savings rate, and a large current account deficit. Some observers are also concerned by rising economic disparities as well as the high cost and uneven availability of health care services.
As of 2006, the gross external debt was nearly USD $10 trillion or 79% of GDP,(see List of countries by external debt). The gross public debt is 65% of GDP (also known as national debt and refers to what is owned by the combined public sector to both domestic and foreign creditors; see List of countries by public debt and global debt). The national debt includes the amount of the cumulative government deficits and interest.


Geography

The United States is a nation in the Western Hemisphere. It consists of forty-eight contiguous states on the North American continent; Alaska, an enormous peninsula which forms the northwestern most part of North America, and Hawaii, an archipelago in the Pacific Ocean. It also holds several United States territories in the Pacific & Caribbean. The country shares land borders with Canada and Mexico and a water border with Russia.



Language and religion

Although the United States has no official language at the federal level, English is the de facto national language.
In 2003, about 215 million, or 82 percent of the population aged five years and older, spoke only English at home. Spanish, spoken by over 10 percent of the population at home, is the second most common language and the most widely taught foreign language. Immigrants seeking naturalization must know English. Some Americans advocate making English the country's official language, as it is in at least twenty-eight states. Both Hawaiian and English are official languages in Hawaii by state law. Several insular territories also grant official recognition to their native languages, along with English: Samoan and Chamorro are recognized by Samoa and Guam, respectively; Carolinian and Chamorro are recognized by the Northern Mariana Islands; Spanish is an official language of Puerto Rico. While neither has an official language, New Mexico has laws providing for the use of both English and Spanish, as Louisiana does for English and French.
The United States government does not audit Americans' religious beliefs. In a private survey conducted in 2001, 76.7 percent of American adults identified themselves as Christian, down from 86.4 percent in 1990. Protestant denominations accounted for 52 percent, while Roman Catholics, at 24.5 percent, were the largest individual denomination. A different study describes white evangelicals, 26.3 percent of the population, as the country's largest religious cohort; evangelicals of all races are estimated at 30–35 percent. The total reporting non-Christian religions in 2001 was 3.7 percent, up from 3.3 percent in 1990. The leading non-Christian faiths were Judaism (1.4 percent), Islam (0.5 percent), Buddhism (0.5 percent), Hinduism (0.4 percent), and Unitarian Universalism (0.3 percent). Between 1990 and 2001, the number of Muslims and Buddhists more than doubled. From 8.2 percent in 1990, 14.2 percent in 2001 described themselves as agnostic, atheist, or simply having no religion, still significantly less than in other postindustrial countries such as Britain (44 percent) and Sweden (69 percent).

Education

In the American educational system children are required to attend school from the age of five or six. Students typically graduate from high school at age eighteen although many states allow students to drop out at age sixteen. The public education systems vary from one state to another but generally are organized as follows:
Age 5: Kindergarten
Ages 6-11: Elementary school. Children start in grade 1 and advance to grade 5 or 6.
Ages 11-14 or 12-14: Junior high school or middle school (usually grades 6 or 7 through grade 8 or 9).
Ages 14-18: High school (usually grades 9-12 or 10-12).
A system also becoming more popular is 4-year schooling segments. Such as:
Ages 6-9 (Grades 1-4) Elementary.
Ages 10-13 (Grades 5-8) Middle.
Ages 14-18 (Grades 9-12) High/secondary.
The entire span of primary and secondary education, from Kindergarten to grade 12, is often abbreviated in the US as K-12 or K12, which spoken in American English is rendered as "K through 12" or "K 12." Additionally, many children attend schools before they reach the age of five. These preschools are often private and not part of the public educational system although some public school systems include preschools.

Climate

The climate is temperate in most areas, tropical in Hawaii and southern Florida, polar in Alaska, semiarid in the Great Plains west of the 100th meridian, Mediterranean in coastal California and arid in the Great Basin. Its comparatively generous climate contributed (in part) to the country's rise as a world power, with infrequent severe drought in the major agricultural regions, a general lack of widespread flooding, and a mainly temperate climate that receives adequate precipitation.

Food

The types of food served at home vary greatly and depend upon the region of the country and the family's own cultural heritage. Recent immigrants tend to eat food similar to that of their country of origin, and Americanized versions of these cultural foods, such as American Chinese cuisine or Italian-American cuisine often eventually appear. German cuisine also had a profound impact on American cuisine, especially the mid-western cuisine, with potatoes and meat being the most iconic ingredients in both cuisines.Dishes such as the hamburger, pot roast, baked ham and hot dogs are examples of American dishes derived from German cuisine.