CHAPTER 1: AMERICAN GEOGRAPHY

I. INTRODUCTION

United States Geography, study of the land, physical features, and climate of the United States of
America, and the interaction between these natural features and the plants, animals, and people
that live in the country.
The United States of America is a federal republic on the continent of North America. It has an
area of 9,826,630 sq km (3,794,083 sq mi) and is the third largest country in the world after
Russia and Canada. The estimated U.S. population for the year 2007 is 301,139,950, third in the
world behind China and India.
The United States consists of 48 contiguous states and the noncontiguous states of Alaska and
Hawaii. In addition, the United States includes a number of outlying areas, such as the
Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands of the United States, which are located on
the Caribbean Sea, and the islands of American Samoa and Guam, located in the Pacific Ocean.
The national capital is Washington, D.C., located along the banks of the Potomac River between
the states of Maryland and Virginia.

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The 50 U.S. states vary widely in size and population. The largest states in area are Alaska at
1,717,854 sq km (663,267 sq mi), followed by Texas, and California. The smallest state is Rhode
Island, with an area of 4,002 sq km (1,545 sq mi). The state with the largest population is
California (36,457,549, 2006 estimate), followed by Texas, and New York. Only 515,004 people
(2006 estimate) live on the plateaus and rugged mountains of Wyoming, the least populous state.
Each state is subdivided into counties, with the exception of Louisiana, where comparable
political units are called parishes. Within these counties and parishes, there are communities that
range in size from small villages to towns to cities. Extensive areas of urban sprawl exist in
larger metropolitan areas such as Los Angeles, California; Chicago, Illinois; and New York City.
II. BRIEF HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES
The first Europeans to reach North America were Icelandic Vikings, led by Leif Ericson,
about the year 1000.Traces of their visit have been found in the Canadian province of
Newfoundland, but the Vikings failed to establish a permanent settlement and soon lost
contact with the new continent.
Five centuries later, the demand for Asian spices, texttiles, and dyes spurred European
navigators to dream of shorter routes between East and West. Acting on behalf of the Spanish
crown, in 1492 the Italian navigator Christopher Columbus sailed west from Europe and
landed on one of the Bahama Islands in the Caribbean Sea. Within 40 years, Spanish
adventurers had carved out a huge empire in Central and South America.
1. The colonial era (Colonial Period 1607–1776)
Colonial settlers came to America for many reasons. Some came for religious freedom. Some
came to make money. They settled into 13 colonies, areas that are now the states known as New
York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Massachusetts, New
Hampshire, Maryland, Georgia, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Delaware. There were other
scattered colonies like St. Augustine in what is now known as Florida.
The first successful English colony was founded at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607.Afew years
later, English Puritans came to American to escape religious persecution for their opposition to
the Church of England. In 1620, the Puritans founded Plymouth Colony in what later became
Massachusetts. Plymouth was the second permanent British settlement in North America and
the first in New England.
In New England the Puritans hoped to build a ―city upon a hill‖- an ideal community. Ever since,
Americans have viewed their country as a great experiment, a worthy model for other nations to

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follow. The Puritans believed that government should enforce God’s morality, and they strictly
punishes heretics, adulterers, drunks, and violators of the Sabbath. In spite of their own quest
for religious freedom, the Puritans practiced a form of intolerant moralism. In 1636, an English
clergyman named Roger Williams left Massachusetts and founded the colony of Rhode Island,
based on the principles of religious freedom and separation of church and state, two ideals that
were later adopted by framers of he U.S. Constitution.
Colonists arrived from other European countries, but the English were far better established in
America. By 1733, English settlers had founded 13 colonies along the Atlantic Coast, from New
Hampshire in the North to Georgia in the South. Elsewhere in North America, the French
controlled Canada and Louisiana, which included the vast Mississippi River watershed. France
and England fought several wars during the 18th century, with North America being drawn into
every one. The end of the Seven Years’ War in 1763 left England in control of Canada and all
of North America east of the Mississippi.
Soon afterwards England and its colonies were in conflict. The mother country imposed new
taxes, in part to defray the cost of fighting the Seven Years’ War, and expected Americans to
lodge British soldiers in their homes. The colonists resented the taxes and resisted the quartering
of soldiers. Insisting that they could be taxed only by their own colonial assemblies, the
colonists rallied behind the slogan ― no taxation without representation‖.
All the taxes, except one on tea, were removed, but in 1773 a group of patriots responded by
staging the Boston Tea Party. Disguised as Indians, they boarded British merchant ships and
dumped 342 crates of tea into Boston harbor. This provoked a crackdown by the British
Parliament, including the closing of Boston harbor to shipping. Colonial leaders convened the
First Continental Congress in 1774 to discuss the colonies’ opposition to British rule. War broke
out on April 19, 1775, when British soldiers confronted colonial rebels in Lexington,
Massachusetts. On July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress adopted a Declaration of
Independence.
At first the Revolutionary War went badly for the Americans. With few provisions and little
training, American troops generally fought well, but were outnumbered and overpowered by the
British Army at Saratoga, New York. France had secretly been aiding the Americans, but was
reluctant to ally itself openly until they had proved themselves in battles. Following the
Americans’ victory at Saratoga, France and America signed treaties of alliance, and France
provided the Americans with troops and warships.

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The last major battle of the American Revolution took place at Yorktown, Virginia, in 1781. A
combined force of American and French troops surrounded the British and forced their
surrender. Fighting continued in some areas for two more years, and the war officially ended
with the Treaty of Paris in 1783, by which England recognized American independence.
2. A new nation
As a result of the Treaty of Paris of 1783, the new nation controlled all of North America from
the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River between Canada and Florida. Canada, to the north,
remained British territory. Great Britain returned Florida to Spain, and Spain continued to
control the area west of the Mississippi River.
The original 13 colonies made up the first 13 states of the United States. Eventually, the
American land west of the Appalachian Mountains was divided into territories.
At the end of the American Revolution, the new nation was still a loose confederation of states.
But in 1787, American leaders got together and wrote the Constitution of the United States. The
Constitution became the country’s basic law and welded it together into a solid political unit. The
men who write it included some of the most famous and important figures in American history.
Among them were George Washington and James Madison of Virginia, Alexander Hamilton of
New York, and Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania. The authors of the Constitution, along with
other early leaders such as Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, won lasting fame as the Founding
Fathers of the United States.
3. Slavery and the civil war
The Civil War is the central event in America's historical consciousness. While the Revolution
of 1776-1783 created the United States, the Civil War of 1861-1865 determined what kind of
nation it would be. The war resolved two fundamental questions left unresolved by the
revolution: whether the United States was to be a dissolvable confederation of sovereign states
or an indivisible nation with a sovereign national government; and whether this nation, born of a
declaration that all men were created with an equal right to liberty, would continue to exist as
the largest slaveholding country in the world.

Northern victory in the war preserved the United States as one nation and ended the institution
of slavery that had divided the country from its beginning. But these achievements came at the
cost of 625,000 lives--nearly as many American soldiers as died in all the other wars in which
this country has fought combined. The American Civil War was the largest and most destructive

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conflict in the Western world between the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 and the onset of
World War I in 1914.
The Civil War started because of uncompromising differences between the free and slave states
over the power of the national government to prohibit slavery in the territories that had not yet
become states. When Abraham Lincoln won election in 1860 as the first Republican president on
a platform pledging to keep slavery out of the territories, seven slave states in the deep South
seceded and formed a new nation, the Confederate States of America. The incoming Lincoln
administration and most of the Northern people refused to recognize the legitimacy of secession.
They feared that it would discredit democracy and create a fatal precedent that would eventually
fragment the no-longer United States into several small, squabbling countries.
The event that triggered war came at Fort Sumter in Charleston Bay on April 12, 1861. Claiming
this United States fort as their own, the Confederate army on that day opened fire on the federal
garrison and forced it to lower the American flag in surrender. Lincoln called out the militia to
suppress this "insurrection." Four more slave states seceded and joined the Confederacy. By the
end of 1861 nearly a million armed men confronted each other along a line stretching 1200 miles
from Virginia to Missouri. Several battles had already taken place--near Manassas Junction in
Virginia, in the mountains of western Virginia where Union victories paved the way for creation
of the new state of West Virginia, at Wilson's Creek in Missouri, at Cape Hatteras in North
Carolina, and at Port Royal in South Carolina where the Union navy established a base for a
blockade to shut off the Confederacy's access to the outside world.

But the real fighting began in 1862. Huge battles like Shiloh in Tennessee, Gaines' Mill, Second
Manassas, and Fredericksburg in Virginia, and Antietam in Maryland foreshadowed even
bigger campaigns and battles in subsequent years, from Gettysburg in Pennsylvania to
Vicksburg on the Mississippi to Chickamauga and Atlanta in Georgia. By 1864 the original
Northern goal of a limited war to restore the Union had given way to a new strategy of "total
war" to destroy the Old South and its basic institution of slavery and to give the restored Union
a "new birth of freedom," as President Lincoln put it in his address at Gettysburg to dedicate a
cemetery for Union soldiers killed in the battle there.
For three long years, from 1862 to 1865, Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia staved off
invasions and attacks by the Union Army of the Potomac commanded by a series of ineffective
generals until Ulysses S. Grant came to Virginia from the Western theater to become general in

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chief of all Union armies in 1864. After bloody battles at places with names like The Wilderness,
Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, and Petersburg, Grant finally brought Lee to bay at Appomattox in
April 1865. In the meantime Union armies and river fleets in the theater of war comprising the
slave states west of the Appalachian Mountain chain won a long series of victories over
Confederate armies commanded by hapless or unlucky Confederate generals. In 1864-1865
General William Tecumseh Sherman led his army deep into the Confederate heartland of
Georgia and South Carolina, destroying their economic infrastructure while General George
Thomas virtually destroyed the Confederacy's Army of Tennessee at the battle of Nashville.
By the spring of 1865 all the principal Confederate armies surrendered, and when Union cavalry
captured the fleeing Confederate President Jefferson Davis in Georgia on May 10, 1865,
resistance collapsed and the war ended. The long, painful process of rebuilding a united nation
free of slavery began.
4. The late 19th century
Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in 1865, depriving America of a leader uniquely qualified by
background and temperament to heal the wounds left by the Civil War. His successor, Andrew
Johnson, was a southerner who had remained loyal to the Union during the war. Northern
members of Johnson’s own party ( Republican ) set in motion a process to remove him from
office for allegedly acting too leniently towards former Confederates. Johnson’s acquittal was an
important victory for the principle of separation of powers: A president should not be removed
from office because Congress disagrees with his policies, but only if he has committed, in the
words of the Constitution, ―treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.‖
Within a few years later after the end of the Civil War, the United States became a leading
industrial power, and shrewd businessmen made great fortunes. The first transcontinental
railroad was completed in 1869. By 1900 the United States has more rail mileage than all of
Europe. The petroleum industry prospered and John D. Rockefeller of the Standard Oil Company
became one of the richest men in America. Andrew Carnegie, who started out as a poor Scottish
immigrant, built a vast empire of steel mills. Textile mills multiplied in the South, and meat-
packing plants sprang up in Chicago, Illinois. An electrical industry flourished as Americans
made use of a series of inventions: the telephone, the light bulb, the phonograph, the alternating-
current motor and transformer, motion pictures. In Chicago, architect Louis Sullivan used steel-
frame construction to fashion America’s distinctive contribution to the modern city: the
skyscraper. But unrestrained economic growth brought dangers. To limit competition, railroads

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merged and set standardized shipping rates. Trusts – huge combinations of corporations – tried to
establish monopoly control over some industries, notably oil. These giant enterprises could
produce goods efficiently and sell them cheaply, but they could also fix prices and destroy
competitors. To counteract them, the federal government took action. The Interstate Commerce
Commission was created in 1887 to control railroad rates. The Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890
banned trusts, mergers, and business agreements‖ in restraint of trade‖.
Industrialization brought with it the rise of organized labor. The American Federation of Labor,
founded in 1886, was a coalition of trade unions for skilled laborers. The late 19th century was a
period of heavy immigration, and many of the workers in the new industries were foreign-born.
For American farmers, however, times were hard. Food prices were falling, and farmers had to
bear the costs of high shipping rates, expensive mortgages, high taxes, and tariffs on consumer
goods.
With the exception of the purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867, American territory had
remained fixed since 1848. In the 1890s a new spirit of expansion took hold. The United States
followed the lead of northern European nations in assert in a duty to ―civilize‖ the peoples of
Asia, Africa, and Latin America. After American newspapers published lurid accounts of
atrocities in the Spanish colony of Cuba, the United States and Spain went to war in 1898. When
the war was over, the United States had gained a number of possessions from Spain: Cuba, the
Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam. In an unrelated action, the United States also acquired the
Hawaiian Islands.
Yet Americans, who had themselves thrown off the shackles of empire, were not comfortable
with administering one. In 1902, American troops left Cuba, although the new republic was
required to grant naval bases to the United States. The Philippines obtained limited self-
government in 1907 and complete independence in 1946. Puerto Rico became a self-governing
commonwealth within the United States, and Hawaii became a state in 1959 (so did Alaska).
5. The progressive movement
While Americans were venturing abroad, they were also taking a fresh look at social problems
at home. Despite the signs of prosperity, up to half of all industrial workers still lived in
poverty. New York, Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco could be proud of their museums,
universities, and public libraries – and ashamed of their slums. The prevailing economic dogma
had been laissez faire: let the government interfere with commerce as little as possible. About
1900, the Progressive Movement arose to reform society and individuals through government

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action. The movement’s supporters were primarily economists, sociologists, technicians, and
civil servants who sought scientific, cost-effective solutions to political problems.
Social workers went into the slums to establish settlement houses, which provided the poor with
health services and recreation. Prohibitionists demanded an end to the sale of liquor, partly to
prevent the suffering that alcoholic husbands inflicted on their wives and children. In the cities,
reform politicians fought corruption, regulated public transportation, and built municipally
owned utilities. States passed laws restricting child labor, limiting workdays, and providing
compensation for injured workers.
Some Americans favored more radical ideologies. The Socialist Party, led by Eugene V. Debs,
advocated a peaceful, democratic transition to a state-run economy. But socialism never found a
solid footing in the United States – the party’s best showing in a presidential race was 6 percent
of the vote in 1912.
6. War and peace
When World War I erupted in Europe in 1914, President Wooddrow Wilson urged a policy of
strict American neutrality. Germany’s declaration of unrestricted submarine warfare against all
ships bound for Allied ports undermined that position. When Congress declared war on
Germany in 1917, the American army was a force of only 200,000 soldiers. Millions of men
had to be drafted, trained, and shipped across the submarine-infested Atlantic. A full year
passed before the US Army was ready to make a significant contribution to the war effort.
By the fall of 1918, Germany’s position had become hopeless. Its armies were retreating in the
face of a relentless American buildup. In October Germany asked for peace, and an armistice
was declared on November 11. In 1919, Wilson himself went to Versailles to help draft the
peace treaty.
Although he was cheered by crowds in the Allied capitals, at home his international outlook was
less popular. His idea of a League of Nations was included in the Treaty of Versailles, but the
US. Senate did not ratify the treaty, and the United States did not participate in the league.
The majority of Americans did not mourn the defeated treaty. They turned inward, and the
United States withdrew from European affairs. At the same time, Americans were becoming
hostile to foreigners in their midst. In 1919, a series of terrorist bombings produced the ―Red
Scare‖. Under the authority of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, political meetings were
raided and several hundred foreign-born political radicals were deported, even though most of
them were innocent of any crime. In 1921 two Italian-born anarchists, Nicola Sacco and

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Bartolomeo Vanzetti, were convicted of murder on the basis of shaky evidence. Intellectuals
protested, but in 1927 the two men were electrocuted. Congress enacted immigration limits in
1921 and tightened them further in 1924 and 1929. These restrictions favored immigrants from
Anglo-Saxon and Nordic countries.
The 1920s were an extraordinary and confusing time, when hedonism coexisted with puritanical
conservatism. It was the age of Prohibition: In 1920 a constitutional amendment outlawed the
sale of alcoholic beverages. Yet drinkers cheerfully evaded the law in thousands of
―speakeasies‖ (illegal bars), and gangsters made illicit fortunes in liquor. It was also the Roaring
Twenties, the age of jazz and spectacular silent movies and such fads as flagpole-sitting and
goldfish-swallowing. The Ku Klux Klan, a racist organization born in the South after the Civil
War, attracted new followers and terrorized blacks, Catholics, Jews, and immigrants. At the
same time, a Catholic, New York Governor Alfred E.Smith, was a Democratic candidate for
president.
For big business, the 1920s were golden years. The United States was now a consumer society,
with booming markets for radios, home appliances, synthetic textiles, and plastics. One of the
most admired men of the decade was Henry Ford, who has introduced the assembly line into
automobile factories. could pay high wages and still earn enormous profits by mass-producing
the Model T, a car that millions of buyers could afford. For a moment, it seemed that Americans
had the Midas touch.
7. The Great Depression
In October 1929 the stock market crashed, wiping out 40 percent of the paper values of
common stock. Even after the stock market collapse, however, politicians and industry leaders
continued to issue optimistic predictions for the nation's economy. But the Depression
deepened, confidence evaporated and many lost their life savings. By 1933 the value of stock on
the New York Stock Exchange was less than a fifth of what it had been at its peak in 1929.
Business houses closed their doors, factories shut down and banks failed. Farm income fell
some 50 percent. By 1932 approximately one out of every four Americans was unemployed.

The core of the problem was the immense disparity between the country's productive capacity
and the ability of people to consume. Great innovations in productive techniques during and
after the war raised the output of industry beyond the purchasing capacity of U.S. farmers and
wage earners. The savings of the wealthy and middle class, increasing far beyond the

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possibilities of sound investment, had been drawn into frantic speculation in stocks or real
estate. The stock market collapse, therefore, had been merely the first of several detonations in
which a flimsy structure of speculation had been leveled to the ground.

The presidential campaign of 1932 was chiefly a debate over the causes and possible remedies
of the Great Depression. Herbert Hoover, unlucky in entering The White House only eight
months before the stock market crash, had struggled tirelessly, but ineffectively, to set the
wheels of industry in motion again. His Democratic opponent, Franklin D. Roosevelt, already
popular as the governor of New York during the developing crisis, argued that the Depression
stemmed from the U.S. economy's underlying flaws, which had been aggravated by Republican
policies during the 1920s. President Hoover replied that the economy was fundamentally sound,
but had been shaken by the repercussions of a worldwide depression -- whose causes could be
traced back to the war. Behind this argument lay a clear implication: Hoover had to depend
largely on natural processes of recovery, while Roosevelt was prepared to use the federal
government's authority for bold experimental remedies.
The election resulted in a smashing victory for Roosevelt, who won 22,800,000 votes to
Hoover's 15,700,000. The United States was about to enter a new era of economic and political
change.
8. World war II
A gain neutrality was the initial American response to the outbreak of war in Europe in 1939.
But the bombing of Pearl Harbor naval based in Hawaii by the Japanese in December 1941
brought the United States into the war, first against Japan and then against its allies, Germany
and Italy.
American, British, and Soviet war planners agreed to concentrate on defeating Germany first.
British and American forces landed in North Africa in November 1942, proceeded to Sicily and
the Italia mainland in 1943, and liberated Rome on June 4, 1944.Two days later – D-Day-
Allied forces landed in Normandy. Paris was liberated on August 24, and by September
American units had cross the use of atomic bombs against the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Nearly 200,000 civilians were killed. Although the matter can still provoke heated discussion,
the argument in favor of dropping the bombs was that casualties on both sides would have been
greater if the Allies had been forced to invade Japan.
9. The cold war

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The Cold War was a decades-long struggle for global supremacy that pitted the capitalist United
States against the communist Soviet Union. Although there are some disagreements as to when
the Cold War began, it is generally conceded that mid- to late-1945 marks the time when
relations between Moscow and Washington began deteriorating. This deterioration ignited the
early Cold War and set the stage for a dynamic struggle that often assumed mythological
overtones of good versus evil.

At the close of World War II, the Soviet Union stood firmly entrenched in Eastern Europe,
intent upon installing governments there that would pay allegiance to the Kremlin. It also
sought to expand its security zone even further into North Korea, Central Asia, and the Middle
East. Similarly, the United States established a security zone of its own that comprised Western
Europe, Latin America, Southeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan. From the long view
of history, it is clear that both sides were jockeying for a way to secure their futures from the
threat of another world war, but it was the threat that each side perceived from the other that
allowed for the development of mutual suspicion. It was this mutual suspicion, augmented by
profound distrust and misunderstanding that would ultimately fuel the entire conflict.

Interestingly, for the first few years of the early Cold War (between 1945 and 1948), the conflict
was more political than military. Both sides squabbled with each other at the UN, sought closer
relations with nations that were not committed to either side, and articulated their differing
visions of a postwar world. By 1950, however, certain factors had made the Cold War an
increasingly militarized struggle. The communist takeover in China, the pronouncement of the
Truman Doctrine, the advent of a Soviet nuclear weapon, tensions over occupied Germany, the
outbreak of the Korean War, and the formulation of the Warsaw Pact and the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization as rival alliances had all enhanced the Cold War's military dimension. U.S.
foreign policy reflected this transition when it adopted a position that sought to "contain" the
Soviet Union from further expansion. By and large, through a variety of incarnations, the
containment policy would remain the central strategic vision of U.S. foreign policy from 1952
until the ultimate demise of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Successive American presidents and successive Soviet premiers tried to manage the Cold War
in different ways, and the history of their interactions reveals the delicate balance-of-power that

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needed to be maintained between both superpowers. Dwight Eisenhower campaigned as a hard-
line Cold Warrior and spoke of "rolling back" the Soviet empire, but when given a chance to
dislodge Hungary from the Soviet sphere-of-influence in 1956, he declined. The death of Stalin
in 1953 prefaced a brief thaw in East-West relations, but Nikita Kruschev also found it more
politically expedient to take a hard line with the United States than to speak of cooperation.

By 1960, both sides had invested huge amounts of money in nuclear weapons, both as an
attempt to maintain parity with each other's stockpiles, but also because the idea of deterring
conflict through "mutually assured destruction" had come to be regarded as vital to the national
interest of both. As nuclear weapons became more prolific, both nations sought to position
missile systems in ever closer proximity to each other's borders. One such attempt by the Soviet
government in 1962 precipitated the Cuban Missile Crisis, arguably the closest that the world
has ever come to a large-scale nuclear exchange between two countries.

It was also in the early 1960s that American containment policy shifted from heavy reliance on
nuclear weapons to more conventional notions of warfare in pursuit of a more "flexible
response" to the spread of communism. Although originally articulated by President Kennedy, it
was in 1965 that President Johnson showcased the idea of flexible response when he made the
initial decision to commit American combat troops to South Vietnam. American thinking had
come to regard Southeast Asia as vital to its national security, and President Johnson made clear
his intention to insure South Vietnam's territorial and political integrity "whatever the cost or
whatever the challenge."(1)

The United States ultimately fought a bloody and costly war in Vietnam that poisoned U.S.
politics and wreaked havoc with its economy. The Nixon administration inherited the conflict in
1969, and although it tried to improve relations with the Soviets through detente – and even
took the unprecedented step of establishing diplomatic relations with Communist China –
neither development was able to bring about decisive change on the Vietnamese battlefield. The
United States abandoned the fight in 1973 under the guise of a peace agreement that left South
Vietnam emasculated and vulnerable.

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Although Nixon continued to negotiate with the Soviets and to court Maoist China, the Soviet
Union and the United States continued to subvert one another's interests around the globe in
spite of detente's high-minded rhetoric. Leonid Brezhnev had been installed as Soviet premier in
1964 as Kruschev's replacement, and while he too desired friendlier relations with the United
States on certain issues (particularly agriculture), genuinely meaningful cooperation remained
elusive.

By the end of the 1970s, however, the chance for an extended thaw had utterly vanished. Jimmy
Carter had been elected president in 1976, and although he was able to hammer out a second
arms limitation agreement with Brezhnev, the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan significantly
soured U.S.-Soviet relations. Seeking to place a greater emphasis on human rights in his foreign
policy, Carter angrily denounced the incursion and began to adopt an increasingly hard line with
the Soviets. The following year, Americans overwhelmingly elected a president who spoke of
waging the Cold War with even greater intensity than had any of his predecessors, and Ronald
Reagan made good on his promises by dramatically increasing military budgets in the early
1980s.

Nonetheless, by 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev had replaced Brezhnev in Moscow, and he quickly
perceived that drastic changes to the Soviet system were necessary if the USSR was to survive
as a state. He instituted a series of liberal reforms known as perestroika, and he seemed
genuinely interested in more open relations with the West, known as glasnost. Although
President Reagan continued to use bellicose language with respect to the Soviet Union (as when
he labeled it an "evil empire"(2)), the Gorbachev-Reagan relationship was personally warm and
the two leaders were able to decrease tensions substantially by the time Reagan left the White
House in 1989.

Despite improved East-West relations, however, Gorbachev's reforms were unable to prevent
the collapse of a system that had grown rigid and unworkable. By most measures, the Soviet
economy had failed to grow at all since the late 1970s and much of the country's populace had
grown weary of the aged Communist hierarchy. In 1989, the spontaneous destruction of the
Berlin Wall signaled the end of Soviet domination in Eastern Europe, and two years later the
Soviet government itself fell from power.

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The Cold War had lasted for forty-six years, and is regarded by many historians, politicians, and
scholars as the third major war of the twentieth century.
10. Decades of changes
After World War II, the presidency had alternated between Democrats and Republicans, but, for
the most part, Democrats had held majorities in the Congress – in both the House of
Representatives and the Senate. A string of 26 consecutive years of Democratic control was
broken in 1980, when the Republicans gained a majority in the Senate; at the same time,
Republican Ronald Reagan was elected president. This change marked the onset of a volatility
that has characterized American voting patterns ever since.
Whatever their attitudes towards Reagan’s policies, most Americans credited him with a
capacity for instilling pride in their country and a sense of optimism about the future. If there
was a central them to his domestic policies, it was that the federal government had become too
big and federal taxes too high.
Despite a growing federal budget deficit, in 1983, the US Economy entered into one of the
longest periods of sustained growth since World War II. The Reagan administration suffered a
defeat in the 1986 elections, however, when Democrats regained control of the Senate. The
most serious issue of the day was the revelation that the United States had secretly sold arms to
Iran in an attempt to win freedom for American hostages held in Lebanon and to finance
antigovernment forces in Nicaragua at a time when Congress had prohibited such aid. Despite
these revelations, Reagan continued to enjoy strong popularity throughout his second term in
office.
His successor in 1988, Republican George Bush, benefited from Reagan’s popularity and
continued many of his policies. When Iraq invaded oil-rich Kuwait in 1990, Bush put together a
multinational coalition that liberated Kuwait early in 1991.
By 1992, however, the American electorate had become restless again. Voters elected Bill
Clinton, a Democrat, president, only to turn around two years later and give Republicans their
first majority in both the House and Senate in 40 years. Meanwhile, several perennial debates
had broken out anew – between advocates of power, between advocates of prayer in public
schools and defenders of separation of church and state, between those who emphasize swift
and sure punishment of criminals and those who seek to address the underlying causes of crime.
Complaints about the influence of money on political campaigns inspired a movement to limit

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 the number of terms elected officials could serve. This and other discontents with the system led
to the formation of the strongest Third-Party movement in generations, led by Texas
businessman H.Ross Perot.
Although the economy was strong in the mid-1990s, two phenomena were troubling many
Americans. Corporations were resorting more and more to a process known as downsizing:
trimming the work force to cut costs despite the hardships this inflicted on workers. And in
many industries the gap between the annual compensations of corporate executives and
common laborers had become enormous. Even the majority of Americans who enjoy material
comfort worry about a perceived decline in the quality of life, in the strength of the family, in
neighborliness and civility. Americans probably remain the most optimistic people on the
world, but with the century drawing to a close, opinion polls showed that trait in shorter supply
than usual.

11. Beginning of the 21st century

By the end of the 20th century the Cold War had ended, and the United States was riding a wave
of unparalleled economic prosperity. But Americans learned at the dawn of the 21st century that
they were not immune to the dangers posed by a volatile and turbulent world.
On September 11, 2001, terrorists carried out a devastating attack on the World Trade Center in
New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. It was the first enemy action on
American soil since the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941.The attack punctured forever
any national illusions that the United States was invulnerable.
The country also faced an economic recession beginning in 2001 in which more than a million
jobs were lost. The recession reminded the country that economic good times were not
guaranteed to last forever. While new realities pawned new fears, they also revealed reserves of
resilience and strength in the national character. Faced with unexpected challenges, a
resourceful and increasingly diverse country showed the world that it could not be easily
demoralized.

III. AN EXPANSIVE AND DIVERSE NATION

A Cultural Diversity
The United States is certainly one of the most diverse countries of the world, both from a cultural
and an environmental perspective. The land that is now the United States was home to diverse

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cultures when the first Europeans and Africans arrived. It was inhabited by a variety of Native
American peoples who spoke more than 300 different languages. The Europeans and Africans
added their own varying cultures to this diversity.
The 13 colonies they founded along the eastern seaboard became the United States in the late
18th century. During the following century, the new nation added huge chunks of territory, and
millions of immigrants arrived, mainly from Europe and especially during the years from 1860 to
1914. A second migration occurred in the Southwest, where Hispanics pushed northward from
Mexico, leaving an indelible imprint. In addition, slaves were brought from Africa to work on
agricultural estates in the South, where they formed a large percentage of the population. Of
those who chose to come to the United States, many saw it as a land of plenty, and certainly that
was true. However, many Americans faced extraordinary hardships as they adapted to a natural
and cultural environment that was sometimes harsh and demanding.

B Geographic Diversity
During the settlement of the nation, immigrants moved westward across the United States and
found a rich and varied natural environment. From the original coastal colonies, settlers made
their way over the Appalachian Mountains beginning in the 1700s. Beyond the mountains lay the
vast rolling territory drained by the Mississippi River and the Great Lakes. There settlers
encountered the rich farmlands of the Ohio Valley, the Mississippi Delta, and the Great Plains.
For decades, the rugged peaks of the Rocky Mountains and the arid landscape of the Southwest
discouraged movement further west. In the mid-1800s, however, spurred by the discovery of
gold in California, determined settlers followed trails through the mountain passes to reach the
West Coast. In the valleys of California and Oregon, they found productive agricultural land, and
they began harvesting the timber reserves from the untouched forests of the Pacific Northwest.
The purchase of Alaska in 1867 added a mountainous northern territory rich in natural resources.
The annexation of Hawaii in 1898 gave the United States what would be its only tropical state.
The United States has been blessed with many natural advantages, such as climates favorable for
agriculture, extensive internal waterways, and abundant natural resources.
All four of the world’s most productive agricultural climates are found in the United States.
These climatic regions display a favorable mix of rain and sun as well as a long growing season,
and together, they cover more than a third of the country. Favorable climates have allowed
farmers to produce vast quantities of grain for human consumption and crops to feed animals.

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These remarkable climatic areas make the United States one of the world’s leading agricultural
countries.
Another major natural advantage—one that is taken for granted by most Americans—is that the
major river systems (the Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Colorado, and Río Grande systems) flow
south. If these rivers flowed north, as rivers do in Russian Siberia, ice and frozen soil would
block the meltwater, causing floods that would saturate the land and render it unusable for
agriculture. Instead, when spring thaws arrive in the interior mountains of the United States,
meltwater flows unimpeded through the river systems to the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico
or the Gulf of California. This almost uninterrupted flow of water provides ample supplies for
drinking water and for crop irrigation and industrial production.
The United States has many other natural advantages. A wide array of valuable mineral
resources, such as oil, natural gas, iron ore, coal, lead, zinc, phosphate, silver, and copper,
benefits mining and industry. The shallow waters along the coastline, known as the continental
shelf, serve as a rich breeding ground for marine life, which promotes commercial and sport
fishing. The comprehensive network of rivers also provides transportation routes for bulk cargo
and the potential for the development of hydroelectricity.

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C Americans and the Environment
The people of the United States used this remarkable array of natural resources to build their
society. At first, and for many years, the United States was primarily an agricultural society.
Until the second decade of the 20th century, most Americans lived and worked on farms. Rich
agricultural land allowed Americans to produce, process, and deliver enough food, not only for
the United States, but also for millions of people in other countries.
Americans developed the land’s natural resources in many other ways as well. They used water
from the nation’s vast river systems to irrigate arid land and to transport people and goods. They
built harbors for ports along the coastlines in order to ship and receive goods from all over the
world. They exploited the forests and the fisheries, building major industries providing goods for
domestic consumption and for export.
Industry developed early in the United States. During the first half of the 19th century, the
Industrial Revolution spread from Europe and stimulated the rapid growth of industry in the
Northeast. Raw materials were brought to the Northeast from other parts of the country by ship
and by a rapidly expanding rail system. Industrial plants processed the raw material into finished
products for export and for domestic consumption.
From 1850 to 1920, industrial expansion continued and moved westward. Chicago, Illinois,
became the leading meatpacking center of the United States. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, became
synonymous with steel. Detroit, Michigan, emerged as the automobile capital of the world. Other
large U.S. cities developed their own specialties. By the beginning of World War I (1914-1918),
America had become the world’s greatest industrial giant. However, as Americans developed the
land and its resources, they sometimes created environmental problems. Forests and natural
grasslands began disappearing as early as colonial times (17th and 18th centuries), as settlers
converted more and more wilderness into farmland. In the 20th century, urban sprawl and
industrial expansion led to pollution of the air and water. A growing population, and its demands
for a convenient lifestyle, generated tremendous amounts of pollution and waste. By the mid-
1990s, Americans created 2.0 kg (4.3 lbs) of trash per person per day. Often the highest hill
around a typical U.S. city consisted of the waste buried at the local sanitary landfill. In the last 30
years of the 20th century, however, Americans have become more aware of environmental
problems and have begun programs to reduce pollution and conserve natural areas. People also
learned to recycle, to reuse resources, and to protect endangered species. See also Conservation.

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D From Diversity, a Unified Country
The United States resembles a colorful quilt stitched together from geographic regions that
maintain unique cultural patterns. Life in rural Alabama, for example, is quite different from life
in suburban California or in the highly urbanized environment of New York City. Despite these
differences, however, the various regions of the United States mesh together to form a single
fabric. An extensive transportation system, a sophisticated communications network, and a
common culture bind the nation into an indivisible unit. The study of geography helps people
understand the complicated mosaic of life in the United States and how despite their differences,
Americans still exhibit characteristics of unity that make the United States a country very distinct
from all the other nations in the world.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Are there of the important events in the history of the US that you want to add to the
list? What are they? What change(s) did they bring about to the political, economic
and social life of the country?
2. Choose your favorite key figure of the American history. Do you think a single leader
can shape history? Why or why not?
3. What are some reasons for the weakening of the US president has launched?
4. Describe the geographic diversity of the USA?
5. If you could choose where to live, would you like to settle down in a country with as
much diversity as the US? Explain your answer.

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