The United States of America

Compiled by O. Zabolotnyi
Kyiv 2008

General Information

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

Left: The map of the USA contiguous

states (CONUS) based on a satellite
image.

At 9.83 million square kilometers and

with more than 300 million people,
the United States is the third largest
country by total area and by
population. The United States is one of the world's most ethnically diverse and
multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many countries.
The U.S. economy is the largest national economy in the world, with a nominal 2006
gross domestic product (GDP) of more than 13 trillion US dollars.

The nation was founded by thirteen colonies of Great Britain located along the
Atlantic coastline. On July 4, 1776, they issued the Declaration of
Independence, which proclaimed their independence from Great Britain and their
formation of a cooperative union. The rebellious states defeated Great Britain in the
American Revolutionary War, the first successful colonial war of independence.
The Bill of Rights, part of the Constitution, comprises ten constitutional
amendments guaranteeing many fundamental civil rights and freedoms.

In the 19th century, the United States acquired land from France, Spain, the United
Kingdom, Mexico, and Russia, and annexed the Republic of Texas and the Republic
of Hawaii. Disputes between the agrarian South and
industrial North over states' rights and the expansion of the
institution of slavery provoked the American Civil War of the
1860s. The North's victory prevented a split of the country
and led to the end of legal slavery in the United States. The
Spanish-American War and World War I confirmed the
nation's status as a military power. In 1945, the United States
emerged from World War II as the first country with nuclear
weapons, a permanent member of the United Nations
Security Council, and a founding member of NATO. The
nation remained a superpower after Cold War. In the current era of globalization the
United States remains a leading economic, political, and cultural force in the 21st
century.

Right: An aircraft carrier (here you can see USS Nimitz) is a

symbol of America as a global power.

Geography, climate and environment

Page 2.

Geography

The United States is situated almost entirely in the western hemisphere: the
contiguous U.S. stretches from the Pacific Ocean on the west to the Atlantic Ocean
on the east, with the Gulf of Mexico to the southeast; it is bordered by Canada on
the north and Mexico on the south. Alaska is the largest state in area; separated
from the contiguous U.S. by Canada, it touches the Pacific on the south and the
Arctic Ocean on the north. Hawaii occupies an archipelago in the central Pacific,
southwest of North America. After Russia and Canada, the U.S. is the world's third
largest nation by total area. The U.S. also possesses several islands scattered
around the West Indies (e.g. Puerto Rico) and the Pacific (e.g., Guam).

Task: Study the physical map of the USA and find all the underlined
geographical features on it.

The coastal plain of the Atlantic seaside gives way further inland to deciduous
forests and the rolling hills of the Piedmont. The Appalachian Mountains divide the
eastern seaboard from the Great Lakes and the grasslands of the Midwest. The
Mississippi–Missouri River, the world's fourth longest river system, runs mainly
north–south through the heart of the country. The flat, fertile prairie of the Great
Plains stretches to the west, interrupted by a highland region in the southeast. The
Rocky Mountains, at the western edge of the Great Plains, extend north to south
across the country, reaching altitudes higher than 14,000 feet (4,300 m) in
Colorado. Farther west are the rocky Great Basin and deserts such as the Mojave.
The Sierra Nevada and Cascade mountain ranges run close to the Pacific coast. At
20,320 feet (6,194 m), Alaska's Mount McKinley is the country's tallest peak. Active
volcanoes are common in Alaska, and Hawaii consists of volcanic islands. The super
volcano underlying Yellowstone National Park in the Rockies is the continent's
largest volcanic feature.

Climate
Page 3.

The U.S., with its large size and geographic variety,

includes most climate types. To the east of the 100th
meridian, the climate ranges from humid continental in
the north to humid subtropical in the south. The
southern tip of Florida is tropical, as is Hawaii. The
Great Plains west of the 100th meridian are semi-arid.
Much of the Western mountains are alpine. The climate
is arid in the Great Basin, desert in the Southwest,
Mediterranean in coastal California, and oceanic in
coastal Oregon and
Washington and southern
Alaska. Most of Alaska is
subarctic or polar. Extreme
weather is not uncommon—
the states bordering the Gulf
of Mexico are prone to
hurricanes, and most of the
world's tornadoes occur
within the country, mainly in
the Midwest's Tornado Alley.
The diagram on the right
shows how warm humid air
from the Gulf of Mexico,
warm dry air from the south-
west and cold dry air from the north collide and cause tornados.

Environment

The U.S. ecology is very diverse, with more than 17,000 native species of flora, and
more than 400 mammal, 700 bird, 500 reptile and amphibian, and 90,000 insect
species. The Endangered Species Act of 1973 protects threatened and endangered
species and their habitats, which are monitored by
the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. There
are fifty-eight national parks and hundreds of other
federally managed parks, forests, and wilderness
areas. Altogether, the government regulates 28.8%
of the country's land area. Most of this is protected,
though some is leased for oil and gas drilling,
mining, or cattle ranching.

Left: A brown bear is catching salmon in Alaska.

Left: A Florida alligator prefers damp tropical habitat of the Everglades.

Above: A diamondback
rattlesnake lives in dry
subtropical areas.

Left: In Alameda, California you can see giant sequoia (redwood)

trees that live about 2000 years. The tallest tree of all is Hyperion
measuring 115.55 m, making him the world’s tallest living thing.

US National Symbols
Page 4.

The United States flag (on the right) is a living symbol of America, standing for
its past, present and future. It symbolizes American people, American land and
American way of life. The US flag has 13 alternate stripes: 7 red and 6 white ones
that remind us of the 13 original British colonies that gained independence and
formed the union. There are also 50 white
stars on the blue rectangle representing the
50 states bound together as a single nation.
Of the three colors of the flag the red color
proclaims courage, the white symbolizes
liberty, and the blue stands for loyalty. The US
flag is known as “Old Glory”, “Star-Spangled
Banner” or, most commonly, “Stars and
Stripes”. According to the protocol it is never lowered before anybody.

The design of the first official US flag was approved by the Continental Congress in
Philadelphia on June 14, 1777. Today June 14 is celebrated as Flag Day. The very
first flag was made for that day by Betsy Ross, and had only 13 stars. With the
admission of new states new stars were added.

Left: The revolutionary flag of

1775.

Right: The Betsy Ross’s flag of June

14, 1777.

The Coat of Arms (on the left) of the USA represents a bald
eagle with wings outspread, holding a
bundle of rods in the left claw and an
olive twig in the other one. The rods
symbolize administering, and the
olive twig stands for love. The motto
reads: “E Pluribus Unum” (Latin,
meaning “one out of many”). The bald eagle (on the right) is recognized as a bird
symbol of America.

The information about some other essential US symbols is given below.

The Declaration of Independence was written by Thomas

Jefferson and signed by the delegates of the thirteen American
colonies at the Continental Congress in Philadelphia on July 4,
1776. The document not only announced the birth of a new
nation, but also presented a philosophy of human freedom,
which has become a dynamic force for the entire world since
then. The Declaration (seen on the right) is considered to be
the most significant document in the USA. The date is
celebrated as the most important of American holidays –
Independence Day.

The fact of signing the Declaration of Independence by the

Continental Congress was announced by tolling the bell in the
State House in Philadelphia. That bell received the name Liberty
Bell.

Page 5.
The Statue of Liberty (“Liberty Enlightening the World”) is a 225-
ton female figure made of steel, 150 feet tall, facing the Atlantic
Ocean from Liberty Island in New York Harbor. The right hand raises
a torch, and in the left hand she holds a tablet with an inscription:
“July IV MDCCLXXVI” (July 4, 1776). The statue was given as a gift
from the people of France to commemorate the friendship between
the two nations. The monument was erected in 1886, when the
USA was celebrating the nation’s 100-th birthday. The Statue of
Liberty serves the symbol of freedom to many million people around the world.

The donkey and the elephant first appeared in political

cartoons. The cartoonist Thomas Nast invented the
Republican elephant and the Democratic donkey (on the left)
in the early 1870, and soon they became fixed types. Today
they serve “their” political parties quite officially.

Uncle Sam has the initials “US”. He originally appeared

in political cartoons and is an unofficial symbol of the US
government. A legend says that the prototype’s name
was Sam Wilson and he supplied meat to the US Army
during the war in 1812. He stamped the supplies with the
letters “US” to signify that they had been certified by a
government inspector. However, the soldiers believed
that those letters stood for “Uncle Sam” – the supplier of
food. Eventually, everything stamped “US” became
recognized as “Uncle Sam’s” property. Initial Uncle Sam’s cartoon images
resembled the original: they portrayed a stout little fellow with a beard and a cocky
grin. Later, after the death of Abraham Lincoln, the cartoonists started to draw
Uncle Sam taller and thinner, making him look like that great American president.

Population of the United States

The United States population is reported by the U.S. Census Bureau to be

305,397,000, including an estimated 11.2 million illegal immigrants. The U.S. is the
third most populous nation in the world, after China and India.

The U.S. has a very diverse population— Race/Ethnicity (2007)

thirty-one ancestry groups have more
than a million members. White Americans 73.94
are the largest racial group, with German White
%
Americans, Irish Americans, and English 12.38
Americans constituting three of the African American
%
country's four largest ancestry groups.
African Americans are the nation's second Asian 4.39%
largest racial minority group, after Native American and Alaskan
0.78%
Hispanics/Latinos, and third largest Native
ancestry group. In 2007, the U.S. Native Hawaiian and Pacific
0.14%
population included an estimated 4.5 Islander
million people with some American Indian Multiracial 2.16%
or Alaskan native ancestry (2.9 million Some other race 6.21%
exclusively of such ancestry) and over 1
15.06
million with some native Hawaiian or Hispanic or Latino (of any race)
Pacific island ancestry (0.5 million %
exclusively). The chart on the right shows the statistics.

Page 6.

About 79% of Americans live in urban areas (as defined by the Census Bureau, such
areas include the suburbs); about half of those reside in cities with populations over
50,000. In 2006, nine cities had more than 1 million residents, and four major cities
had over 2 million (New York City,
Los Angeles, Chicago, and
Houston). There are fifty
metropolitan areas with
populations greater than 1 million,
such as, for example those of
Atlanta (Georgia), Dallas (Texas),
Phoenix (Arizona) and Riverside
(California). However, the
metropolitan areas of the largest
cities accommodate the following
number of residents: New York (NY)
– 18,818 million, Los Angeles (CA)
– 12,950 million, Chicago (IL) –
9,505 million and Houston (TX) –
5,539 million.
The photo on the left shows the megapolis of Los Angeles, California, as a hot and smoggy
place.