United States
United States of America | |
---|---|
Motto: Other traditional mottos:
| |
Anthem: "The Star-Spangled Banner"[3] | |
Capital | Washington, D.C. 38°53′N 77°01′W / 38.883°N 77.017°W |
Largest city | New York City 40°43′N 74°00′W / 40.717°N 74.000°W |
Official languages | None at the federal level[a] |
National language | English (de facto) |
Ethnic groups | By race:
By Hispanic or Latino origin:
|
Religion (2021)[9] |
|
Demonym(s) | American[b][10] |
Government | Federal presidential constitutional republic |
Joe Biden (D) | |
Kamala Harris (D) | |
Nancy Pelosi (D) | |
John Roberts | |
Legislature | Congress |
Senate | |
House of Representatives | |
Independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain | |
July 4, 1776 | |
March 1, 1781 | |
September 3, 1783 | |
June 21, 1788 | |
August 21, 1959 | |
Area | |
• Total area | 3,796,742 sq mi (9,833,520 km2)[12] (3rd[c]) |
• Water (%) | 4.66[11] |
• Land area | 3,531,905 sq mi (9,147,590 km2) (3rd) |
Population | |
• 2021 estimate | 331,893,745[d][13] |
• 2020 census | 331,449,281[e][14] (3rd) |
• Density | 87/sq mi (33.6/km2) (185th) |
GDP (PPP) | 2022 estimate |
• Total | $25.35 trillion[15] (2nd) |
• Per capita | $76,027[15] (9th) |
GDP (nominal) | 2022 estimate |
• Total | $25.35 trillion[15] (1st) |
• Per capita | $76,027[15] (8th) |
Gini (2020) | 48.5[16] high inequality |
HDI (2019) | 0.926[17] very high (17th) |
Currency | U.S. dollar ($) (USD) |
Time zone | UTC−4 to −12, +10, +11 |
• Summer (DST) | UTC−4 to −10[f] |
Date format | mm/dd/yyyy[g] |
Drives on | Right[h] |
Calling code | +1 |
ISO 3166 code | US |
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territories, 326 Indian reservations, and nine minor outlying islands.[i] It is the world's third-largest country by both land and total area.[c] The United States shares land borders with Canada to the north and with Mexico to the south as well as maritime borders with the Bahamas, Cuba, and Russia, among others.[j] With more than 331 million people,[d] it is the third most populous country in the world. The national capital is Washington, D.C., and the most populous city and financial center 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 with Great Britain over taxation and political representation led to the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), which established the nation's independence. In the late 18th century, the U.S. began expanding across North America, gradually obtaining new territories, sometimes through war, frequently displacing Native Americans, and admitting new states. This was strongly related to the belief in manifest destiny, and by 1848, the United States spanned the continent from east to west. The enslavement of African Americans was legal in the southern United States until 1865 when the American Civil War led to its abolition. A century later, the civil rights movement led to legislation outlawing racial discrimination against African Americans. The Spanish–American War and World War I established the U.S. as a world power, and the aftermath of World War II left the United States and the Soviet Union as the world's two superpowers. During the Cold War, both countries opposed each other in the Korean and Vietnam Wars but avoided direct military conflict. They also competed in the Space Race, which culminated in the 1969 American spaceflight that first landed humans on the Moon. The Soviet Union's dissolution in 1991 ended the Cold War, leaving the United States as the world's sole superpower.
The United States is a federal republic 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, NATO, and other international organizations. It is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. Considered a melting pot of cultures and ethnicities, its population has been profoundly shaped by centuries of immigration. The United States is a liberal democracy; it ranks high in international measures of economic freedom, quality of life, education, and human rights; and it has low levels of perceived corruption. It lacks universal health care, retains capital punishment, and has high levels of incarceration and inequality.[26]
The United States is a highly developed country, and its economy accounts for approximately a quarter of global GDP and is the world's largest by GDP at market exchange rates. By value, the United States is the world's largest importer and second-largest exporter. Although its population is only about 4.2% of the world's total, it holds over 30% 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 a leading political, cultural, and scientific force.[27]
Etymology
The first known use of the name "America" dates back to 1507, when it appeared on a world map produced by the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller in the French city of Saint-Dié-des-Vosges. On his map, the name is shown in large letters on what would now be considered South America, in honor of Amerigo Vespucci. The Italian explorer was the first to postulate that the West Indies did not represent Asia's eastern limit but were part of a previously unknown landmass.[28][29] In 1538, the Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator used the name "America" on his own world map, applying it to the entire Western Hemisphere.[30]
The first documentary evidence of the phrase "United States of America" dates from a January 2, 1776 letter written by Stephen Moylan to Joseph Reed, George Washington's aide-de-camp. 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.[31][32][33] The first known publication of the phrase "United States of America" was in an anonymous essay in The Virginia Gazette newspaper in Williamsburg, on April 6, 1776.[34]
The second draft of the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, 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'."[35] 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'."[36] 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.[35] 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.[35]
The phrase "United States" was originally plural in American usage. It described a collection of states—e.g., "the United States are..." The singular form became popular after the end of the Civil War and is now standard usage. 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.[37]
History
Indigenous peoples and pre-Columbian history
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.[38][39][40] The Clovis culture, which appeared around 11,000 BC, is believed to represent the first wave of human settlement of the Americas.[41][42] 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.[43]
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.[44] The city-state of Cahokia is the largest, most complex pre-Columbian archaeological site in the modern-day United States.[45] In the Four Corners region, Ancestral Puebloan culture developed from centuries of agricultural experimentation.[46] The Haudenosaunee, located in the southern Great Lakes region, was established at some point between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries.[47] 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.[48][49] 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,[50] but most academics regard this figure as too low.[48] 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.[48][49]
European settlements
Claims of very early colonization of coastal New England by the Norse are disputed and controversial. The first documented arrival of Europeans in the continental United States is that of Spanish conquistadors such as Juan Ponce de León, who made his first expedition to Florida in 1513. Even earlier, Christopher Columbus had landed in Puerto Rico on his 1493 voyage, and San Juan was settled by the Spanish a decade later.[51] The Spanish set up the first settlements in Florida and New Mexico, such as Saint Augustine, often considered the nation's oldest city,[52] and Santa Fe. The French established their own settlements along the Mississippi River, notably New Orleans.[53] 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.[54][55] 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.[56][57] Many English settlers were dissenting Christians who came seeking religious freedom. In 1784, the Russians were the first Europeans to establish a settlement in Alaska, at Three Saints Bay. Russian America once spanned much of the present-day state of Alaska.[58] The native population of America declined after European arrival for various reasons,[59][60][61] primarily from diseases such as smallpox and measles.[62][63]
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.[64] 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.[65][66] However, with the increased European colonization of North America, Native Americans were displaced and often killed during conflicts.[67]
European settlers also began trafficking of African slaves into Colonial America via the transatlantic slave trade.[68] 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.[69][70] 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.[71][72] However, by the turn of the 18th century, African slaves had supplanted European indentured servants as cash crop labor, especially in the American South.[73]
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.[74] All nonetheless had local governments with elections open to most free men.[75] With extremely high birth rates, low death rates, and steady settlement, the colonial population grew rapidly, eclipsing Native American populations.[76] The Christian revivalist movement of the 1730s and 1740s known as the Great Awakening fueled interest both in religion and in religious liberty.[77]
During the Seven Years' War (1756–1763), 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.[78] 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.[79]
Independence and expansion
The American Revolutionary War fought by the Thirteen Colonies against the British Empire was the first successful war of independence by a non-European entity against a European power in modern history. 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.[80]
In 1774 the First Continental Congress passed the Continental Association, which mandated a colony-wide boycott of British goods. The Second Continental Congress, an assembly representing the United Colonies, unanimously adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776 (annually celebrated as Independence Day).[81] In 1781, the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union established a decentralized government that operated until 1789.[81]
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.[82] Nationalists led the Philadelphia Convention of 1787 in writing the United States Constitution, ratified in state conventions in 1788. Going into force in 1789, this constitution reorganized the federal government into three branches, 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.[83]
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.[84][85][86] 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;[87] in the South, Methodists and Baptists proselytized among slave populations.[88]
Beginning in the late 18th century, American settlers began to expand westward,[89] prompting a long series of American Indian Wars.[90] The 1803 Louisiana Purchase almost doubled the nation's area,[91] Spain ceded Florida and other Gulf Coast territory in 1819,[92] the Republic of Texas was annexed in 1845 during a period of expansionism,[93] and the 1846 Oregon Treaty with Britain led to U.S. control of the present-day American Northwest.[94] 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.[89][95]
The California Gold Rush of 1848–1849 spurred migration to the Pacific coast, which led to the California Genocide[96] and the creation of additional western states.[97] The giving away of vast quantities of land to white European settlers as part of the Homestead Acts, nearly 10% of the total area of the United States, and to private railroad companies and colleges as part of land grants spurred economic development.[98] After the Civil War, new transcontinental railways made relocation easier for settlers, expanded internal trade, and increased conflicts with Native Americans.[99] 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
Irreconcilable sectional conflict regarding the enslavement of Africans and African Americans ultimately led to the American Civil War.[100] 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.[101] 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 620,000 soldiers as well as upwards of 50,000 civilians.[102] 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 except as penal labor. Two other amendments were also ratified, ensuring citizenship and voting rights for blacks.
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, beginning the nadir of American race relations. From 1890 to 1910, the Redeemers established so-called Jim Crow laws, disenfranchising most blacks and some impoverished whites throughout the region. Blacks would face racial segregation nationwide, especially in the South.[103] They also occasionally experienced vigilante violence, including lynching.[104]
Further immigration, expansion, and industrialization
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.[106] 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.[107]
The United States fought Indian Wars west of the Mississippi River from 1810 to at least 1890.[108] 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.[109] Mainland expansion also included the purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867.[110] 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.[111] American Samoa was acquired by the United States in 1900 after the end of the Second Samoan Civil War.[112] The U.S. Virgin Islands were purchased from Denmark in 1917.[113]
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.[114] These dramatic changes were accompanied by growing inequality and social unrest, which prompted the rise of organized labor along with populist, socialist, and anarchist movements.[115] 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, and greater antitrust measures to ensure competition and attention to worker conditions.[116][117][118]
World War I, Great Depression, and World War II
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.[119]
In 1920, the women's rights movement won passage of a constitutional amendment granting women's suffrage.[120] The 1920s and 1930s saw the rise of radio for mass communication and the invention of early television.[121] 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.[122] The Great Migration of millions of African Americans out of the American South began before World War I and extended through the 1960s;[123] whereas the Dust Bowl of the mid-1930s impoverished many farming communities and spurred a new wave of western migration.[124]
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 in the following year, to intern about 120,000[125] U.S. residents (including American citizens) of Japanese descent.[126] Although Japan attacked the United States first, the U.S. nonetheless pursued a "Europe first" defense policy.[127] 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"[128] who met to plan the postwar world, along with Britain, the Soviet Union, and China.[129][130] Although the nation lost around 400,000 military personnel,[131] it emerged relatively undamaged from the war with even greater economic and military influence.[132]
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.[133] The United States and Japan then fought each other in the largest naval battle in history, the Battle of Leyte Gulf.[134][135] The United States 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.[136][137]
Cold War and late 20th century
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.[138] 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.[139]
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, occasionally supporting authoritarian right-wing regimes.[140] American troops fought communist Chinese and North Korean forces in the Korean War of 1950–1953.[141] 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.[141] The United States became increasingly involved in the Vietnam War (1955–1975), introducing combat forces in 1965.[142]
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.[143] 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.[144][145] In 1959, the United States formally expanded beyond the contiguous United States when the territories of Alaska and Hawaii became, respectively, the 49th and 50th states admitted into the Union.[146] The growing Civil Rights Movement used nonviolence to confront segregation and discrimination, with Martin Luther King Jr. becoming a prominent leader and figurehead.[147] A combination of court decisions and legislation, culminating in the Civil Rights Act of 1968, sought to end racial discrimination.[148][149][150] Meanwhile, a counterculture movement grew, which was fueled by opposition to the Vietnam war, the Black Power movement, and the sexual revolution.[151]
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.[152]
The 1970s and early 1980s saw the onset of stagflation. The United States supported Israel during the Yom Kippur War; in response, the country faced an oil embargo from OPEC nations, sparking the 1973 oil crisis. After his election, 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.[153][154] The late 1980s brought a "thaw" in relations with the Soviet Union, and its collapse in 1991 finally ended the Cold War.[155][156][157] This brought about unipolarity[158] with the U.S. unchallenged as the world's dominant superpower.[159]
After the Cold War, the conflict in the Middle East triggered a crisis in 1990, when Iraq invaded and annexed 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 February 1991 by coalition forces from 34 nations, it ended in the expulsion of Iraqi forces from Kuwait and restoration of the monarchy.[160]
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.[161] 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.[162] 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.[163]
21st century
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.[164] Hundreds more died later from illnesses related to the attacks, and perhaps thousands of first responders, cleanup workers, and survivors suffer from long-term effects.[165] In response, President George W. Bush launched the War on Terror, which included a nearly 20-year war in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2021 and the 2003–2011 Iraq War.[166][167] A 2011 military operation in Pakistan led to the killing of Osama bin Laden.[168]
Government policy designed to promote affordable housing,[169] widespread failures in corporate and regulatory governance,[170] and historically low interest rates set by the Federal Reserve[171] led to the United States housing bubble in 2006, which culminated with the financial crisis of 2007–2008 and the Great Recession, the nation's largest economic contraction since the Great Depression.[172] During the crisis, assets owned by Americans lost about a quarter of their value.[173] Barack Obama, the first multiracial[174] president, with African-American ancestry was elected in 2008 amid the crisis,[175] and subsequently passed American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 economic stimulus and the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act in an attempt to mitigate its negative effects and ensure there would not be a repeat of the crisis.
Republican Donald Trump was elected as the 45th president in 2016, a result viewed as one of the biggest political upsets in American history.[176] Trump led the country through the first waves of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, which as of December 2021 is estimated to have killed over 900,000 Americans.[177] In 2020, in what was seen as a repudiation of Trump's divisive leadership, Democrat Joe Biden was elected as the 46th president.[178] On January 6, 2021, supporters of outgoing President Trump stormed the United States Capitol in an unsuccessful effort to disrupt the presidential Electoral College vote count.[179]
Geography
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.[180][181] Hawaii, occupying an archipelago in the central Pacific, southwest of North America, is 10,931 square miles (28,311 km2) in area. The five populated but unincorporated territories of Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, and U.S. Virgin Islands together cover 9,185 square miles (23,789 km2).[182] Measured by only land area, the United States is third in size behind Russia and China, just ahead of Canada.[183]
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.[c][184][185]
Topography
The coastal plain of the Atlantic seaboard gives way further inland to deciduous forests and the rolling hills of the Piedmont.[186] The Appalachian Mountains divide the eastern seaboard from the Great Lakes and the grasslands of the Midwest.[187] 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.[187]
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.[188] Farther west are the rocky Great Basin and deserts such as the Chihuahua and Mojave.[189] 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,[190] and only about 84 miles (135 km) apart.[191] 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.[192] 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.[193]
Climate
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.[194] The Great Plains west of the 100th meridian are semi-arid. Many mountainous areas of the American West 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.[195] 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.[196] Overall, the United States receives more high-impact extreme weather incidents than any other country in the world.[197]
Biodiversity
The U.S. is one of 17 megadiverse countries containing large numbers of endemic species: 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.[199] The United States is home to 428 mammal species, 784 bird species, 311 reptile species, and 295 amphibian species,[200] as well as about 91,000 insect species.[201]
There are 63 national parks and hundreds of other federally managed parks, forests, and wilderness areas, which are managed by the National Park Service.[202] Altogether, the government owns about 28% of the country's land area,[203] mostly in the western states.[204] 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.[205][206]
Environment
Environmental issues include debates on oil and nuclear energy, dealing with air and water pollution, the economic costs of protecting wildlife, logging and deforestation,[207][208] and climate change.[209][210] The most prominent environmental agency is the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), created by presidential order in 1970.[211] The idea of wilderness has shaped the management of public lands since 1964, with the Wilderness Act.[212] 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.[213]
In 2020, the United States had the second-highest annual greenhouse gas emissions in the world and the highest cumulative emissions (measured since 1750).[214] Extreme weather has become more frequent in the U.S., with three times the number of reported heat waves as in the 1960s. Of the ten warmest years ever recorded in the 48 contiguous states, eight have occurred since 1998. In the American Southwest, droughts have become more persistent and more severe.[215] As of 2020, the U.S. ranked 24th among nations in the Environmental Performance Index.[216] The country joined the Paris Agreement on climate change in 2016, and has many other environmental commitments.[217] It withdrew from the Paris Agreement in 2020[218] but rejoined it in 2021.[219]
Government and politics
The United States is a federal republic of 50 states, a federal district, five territories and several uninhabited island possessions.[220][221][222] 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."[223] In 2021, the U.S. ranked 26th on the Democracy Index, and is described as a "flawed democracy".[224] On Transparency International's 2019 Corruption Perceptions Index, its public sector position deteriorated from a score of 76 in 2015 to 69 in 2019.[225]
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.[226] 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;[227] 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 can be voided if the courts determine that it violates the Constitution. The principle of judicial review, not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution, was established by the Supreme Court in Marbury v. Madison (1803)[228] in a decision handed down by Chief Justice John Marshall.[229]
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,[230] and has the power of impeachment, by which it can remove sitting members of the federal government.[231]
- 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.[232]
- 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.[233]
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.[234]
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.[234] 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.[235] The Supreme Court, led by chief justice John Roberts, has nine members, who serve for life.[236]
Political divisions
The 50 states are the principal political divisions in the country. Each state holds jurisdiction over a defined geographic territory, where it shares sovereignty with the federal government. They are subdivided into counties or county equivalents (such as townships and parishes), which typically contain one or more incorporated municipalities. The District of Columbia is a federal district that contains the capital of the United States, the city of Washington.[237] 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.[238] 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.[234]
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.[239] Reservations are usually part of a single state, though 12 reservations cross state boundaries.[240] Indian country jurisdiction over civil and criminal matters is shared by tribes, states, and the federal government.
Citizenship is granted at birth in all states, the District of Columbia, and all major U.S. territories except American Samoa.[k][244][241]
Parties and elections
The United States has operated under a two-party system for most of its history.[245] 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,[246] though the self-financed independent campaign of Ross Perot took 18.9% in 1992.[247] The president and vice president are elected by the Electoral College.[248]
In American political culture, the center-right Republican Party is considered "conservative" and the center-left Democratic Party is considered "liberal".[249][250] 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.
Democrat Joe Biden, the winner of the 2020 presidential election and former vice president, is serving as the 46th president of the United States. Leadership in the Senate includes Vice President Kamala Harris, President pro tempore Patrick Leahy, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.[251] Leadership in the House includes Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, and Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.[252]
In the 117th United States Congress, the House of Representatives and the Senate are narrowly controlled by the Democratic Party. The Senate consists of 50 Republicans and 48 Democrats with two Independents who caucus with the Democrats, with Vice President Harris, a Democrat, able to break ties. The House consists of 221 Democrats and 209 Republicans.[253] Of state governors, there are 28 Republicans and 22 Democrats. Among the D.C. mayor and the five territorial governors, there are three Democrats, one Republican, and one New Progressive.[254]
Foreign relations
The United States has an established structure of foreign relations. It is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, and New York City is home to the United Nations headquarters. It is also a member of the G7,[255] G20, and OECD. 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 Taiwan do not have formal diplomatic relations with the United States (although the U.S. maintains unofficial relations with Taiwan and supplies it with military equipment).[256]
The United States has a "Special Relationship" with the United Kingdom[257] and strong ties with Canada,[258] Australia,[259] New Zealand,[260] the Philippines,[261] Japan,[262] South Korea,[263] Israel,[264] and several European Union countries, including France, Italy, Germany, Spain, and Poland.[265] 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 United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement. Colombia is traditionally considered by the United States as its most loyal ally in South America.[266][267]
The U.S. exercises full international defense authority and responsibility for Micronesia, the Marshall Islands and Palau through the Compact of Free Association.[268]
Government finance
Taxation in the United States is progressive,[269][270] 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.[271] 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 few countries in the world to do so.[272]
In 2010, taxes collected by federal, state, and municipal governments amounted to 24.8% of GDP.[273] 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.[274]
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%).[275]
In 2018, the United States had the largest external debt in the world.[276] As a percentage of GDP, it had the 34th largest government debt in the world in 2017; however, more recent estimates vary.[277] The total national debt of the United States was $23.201 trillion, or 107% of GDP, in the fourth quarter of 2019.[278] By 2012, total federal debt had surpassed 100% of U.S. GDP.[279] The U.S. has a credit rating of AA+ from Standard & Poor's, AAA from Fitch, and AAA from Moody's.[280]
Military
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, which is headquartered at the Pentagon near Washington, D.C., 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 normally administered by the Department of Homeland Security in peacetime and can be transferred to the Department of the Navy in wartime.[281] In 2019, all six branches of the U.S. Armed Forces reported 1.4 million personnel on active duty.[282] The Reserves and National Guard brought the total number of troops to 2.3 million.[282] The Department of Defense also employed about 700,000 civilians, not including contractors.[283] Military service in the United States is voluntary, although conscription may occur in wartime through the Selective Service System.[284] From 1940 until 1973, conscription was mandatory even during peacetime.[285] 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, and Army's XVIII Airborne Corps and 75th Ranger Regiment deployed by Air Force transport aircraft. The Air Force can strike targets across the globe through its fleet of strategic bombers, maintains the air defense across the United States, and provides close air support to Army and Marine Corps ground forces.[286][287][288] The Space Force operates the Global Positioning System, operates the Eastern and Western Ranges for all space launches, and operates the United States' Space Surveillance and Missile Warning networks.[289][290][291] The military operates about 800 bases and facilities abroad,[292] and maintains deployments greater than 100 active duty personnel in 25 foreign countries.[293]
The United States spent $649 billion on its military in 2019, 36% of global military spending.[294] At 4.7% of GDP, the rate was the second-highest among the top 15 military spenders, after Saudi Arabia.[294] 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.[295] 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.[296] In total number of personnel, the United States has the third-largest combined armed forces in the world, behind the Chinese People's Liberation Army and Indian Armed Forces.[297]
The United States is one of the five recognized nuclear weapons states, and one of nine countries to possess nuclear weapons. It has the world's second-largest stockpile of nuclear weapons, after that of Russia. The United States also owns more than 40% of the world's 14,000 nuclear weapons.[298]
Law enforcement and crime
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.[299] According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, and Charles H. Ramsey, former Philadelphia, Pennsylvania police chief, appearing on Meet the Press, there are about 18,000 U.S. police agencies in the United States. That number includes city police departments, county sheriff's offices, state police/highway patrol, and federal law enforcement agencies.[300] 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."[301] In 2016, the U.S. murder rate was 5.4 per 100,000.[302]
The United States has the highest documented incarceration rate and largest prison population in the world.[303] The Department of Justice said that the imprisonment rate for all prisoners sentenced to more than a year in state or federal facilities in 2019 stood at 419 per 100,000 residents which was at its lowest point since 1995 and that the total prison population for the same year stood at 1,430,800 which represented an 11% decrease in the population size from a decade earlier.[304] Other sources such as the Prison Policy Initiative had put the aggregate number of prisoners in 2020 at 2.3 million.[305] According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the majority of inmates held in federal prisons are convicted of drug offenses.[306] Efforts to reduce the prison population include government policies and grassroots initiatives that promote decarceration — recent examples include laws at the federal and state level such as the Fair Sentencing Act, First Step Act, Maryland's Justice Reinvestment Act and California's Money Bail Reform Act. About 9% of prisoners are held in privatized prisons,[305] a practice beginning in the 1980s and a subject of contention.[307] On January 26, 2021, the Biden Administration signed an executive order that halted the renewal of federal government contracts with private prisons,[308][309] but it did not apply to detention centers that held undocumented immigrants.[310]
Although most nations have abolished capital punishment,[311] it 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.[312][313][314] In 2019, the country had the sixth-highest number of executions in the world, following China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Egypt.[315] No executions took place from 1967 to 1977, owing in part to the 1972 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Furman v. Georgia that struck down the previous practice. Since the decision, however, there have been more than 1,500 executions, although 186 of those convicted and sentenced since Furman have been exonerated, as tabulated by the Death Penalty Information Center.[316] 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.[314][317]
Economy
According to the International Monetary Fund, the U.S. GDP of $22.7 trillion constitutes 24% of the gross world product at market exchange rates and over 16% of the gross world product at purchasing power parity.[318][15] On February 2, 2022, the United States had a national debt of $30 trillion.[319]
The United States is the largest importer of goods and second-largest exporter,[320] though exports per capita are relatively low. In 2010, the total U.S. trade deficit was $635 billion.[321] Canada, China, Mexico, Japan, and the European Union are its top trading partners.[322][323]
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.[324] The country ranks fifth in the world in nominal GDP per capita[325] and seventh in GDP per capita at PPP.[15] The U.S. dollar is the world's primary reserve currency.[326]
In 2009, the private sector was estimated to constitute 86.4% of the economy.[327] While its economy has reached a post-industrial level of development, the United States remains an industrial power.[328] In August 2010, the American labor force consisted of 154.1 million people (50%). With 21.2 million people, the public sector 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 other high-income countries.[329]
The United States is the only advanced economy that does not guarantee its workers paid vacation[330] and is one of a few countries in the world without paid family leave as a legal right.[331] Some 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.[332]
Science and technology
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.[333] In the 21st century, approximately two-thirds of research and development funding comes from the private sector.[334] The United States leads the world in scientific research papers and impact factor.[335][336]
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.[337] 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.[338]
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.[339] 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.[340][341]
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.[342] 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.[343] The United States ranked third in the Global Innovation Index in 2021, after Switzerland and Sweden.[344]
Income, wealth, and poverty
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.[345][346] The U.S. also ranks first in the number of billionaires and millionaires in the world, with 724 billionaires and 10.5 million millionaires as of 2020.[347][348] Prior to the 2019–2021 global SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, Credit Suisse listed some 18.6 million U.S. citizens as having a net worth in excess of $1 million.[349] In 2020, the Food Security Index ranked the United States 11th in food security, giving the country a score of 77.5/100.[350] Americans on average have more than twice as much living space per dwelling and per person as EU residents.[351] For 2019, the United Nations Development Programme ranked the United States 17th among 189 countries in its Human Development Index (HDI) and 28th among 151 countries in its inequality-adjusted HDI (IHDI).[352]
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%.[354] According to the Federal Reserve, the top 1% controlled 38.6% of the country's wealth in 2016.[355] 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.[356]
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.[357] 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,[358] leaving the United States with one of the widest income distributions among OECD members.[359] 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.[360] The extent and relevance of income inequality is a matter of debate.[361][362][363]
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[364] Attempts to combat homelessness include the Section 8 housing voucher program and implementation of the Housing First strategy across all levels of government.[365][366][367][368] 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.[369] As of June 2018,[update] 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".[370] 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.[371][372][373] The economic impact and mass unemployment caused by the COVID-19 pandemic raised fears of a mass eviction crisis,[374] with an analysis by the Aspen Institute indicating that between 30 and 40 million people were at risk for eviction by the end of 2020.[375] While the CDC and the Biden government issued a federal eviction moratorium, the Supreme Court invalidated the order, ruling they lacked the authority under federal law to do so.[376]
Transportation
Personal transportation is dominated by automobiles, which operate on a network of 4 million miles (6.4 million kilometers) of public roads.[378] The United States has the world's second-largest automobile market,[379] and has the highest vehicle ownership per capita in the world, with 816.4 vehicles per 1,000 Americans (2014).[380] In 2017, there were 255,009,283 non-two wheel motor vehicles, or about 910 vehicles per 1,000 people.[381]
The civil airline industry is entirely privately owned and has been largely deregulated since 1978, while most major airports are publicly owned.[382] 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.[383] Of the world's 50 busiest passenger airports, 16 are in the United States, including the busiest, Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport.[384]
The United States has the longest rail network in the world, nearly all standard gauge. The network handles mostly freight, with intercity passenger service provided by Amtrak to all but four states.[385]
Transportation is the largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. The country ranks as the world's second-highest emitter of greenhouse gases, exceeded only by China.[386] The United States had been the world's largest producer of greenhouse gases and ranks third, tied with Canada, for greenhouse gas emissions per capita.[387]
Energy
As of 2019[update], the United States receives approximately 80% of its energy from fossil fuels.[388] In 2019, the largest source of the country's energy came from petroleum (36.6%), followed by natural gas (32%), coal (11.4%), renewable sources (11.4%) and nuclear power (8.4%).[388] Americans constitute less than 5% of the world's population, but consume 17% of the world's energy[389] They account for about 25% of the world's petroleum consumption, while producing only 6% of the world's annual petroleum supply.[390]
Demographics
Population
Census | Pop. | Note | %± |
---|---|---|---|
1790 | 3,929,214 | — | |
1800 | 5,308,483 | 35.1% | |
1810 | 7,239,881 | 36.4% | |
1820 | 9,638,453 | 33.1% | |
1830 | 12,866,020 | 33.5% | |
1840 | 17,069,453 | 32.7% | |
1850 | 23,191,876 | 35.9% | |
1860 | 31,443,321 | 35.6% | |
1870 | 38,558,371 | 22.6% | |
1880 | 50,189,209 | 30.2% | |
1890 | 62,979,766 | 25.5% | |
1900 | 76,212,168 | 21.0% | |
1910 | 92,228,496 | 21.0% | |
1920 | 106,021,537 | 15.0% | |
1930 | 123,202,624 | 16.2% | |
1940 | 132,164,569 | 7.3% | |
1950 | 151,325,798 | 14.5% | |
1960 | 179,323,175 | 18.5% | |
1970 | 203,211,926 | 13.3% | |
1980 | 226,545,805 | 11.5% | |
1990 | 248,709,873 | 9.8% | |
2000 | 281,421,906 | 13.2% | |
2010 | 308,745,538 | 9.7% | |
2020 | 331,449,281 | 7.4% | |
2021 (est.) | 331,893,745 | [13] | 0.1% |
Note that the census numbers do not include Native Americans until 1860.[391] |
The U.S. Census Bureau reported 331,449,281 residents as of April 1, 2020.[392] This figure, like most official data for the United States as a whole, excludes the five unincorporated territories (Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands) and minor island possessions. According to the Bureau's U.S. Population Clock, on January 28, 2021, the U.S. population had a net gain of one person every 100 seconds, or about 864 people per day.[393] The United States is the third most populous nation in the world, after China and India. In 2020, the median age of the United States population was 38.5 years.[394]
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.[395] The United States has a diverse population; 37 ancestry groups have more than one million members.[396] White Americans of European ancestry, mostly German, Irish, English, Italian, Polish and French,[397] including White Hispanic and Latino Americans 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.[396] Asian Americans are the country's second-largest racial minority (the three largest Asian ethnic groups are Chinese, Filipino, and Indian).[396]
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.[398] Among 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.[399]
About 82% of Americans live in urban areas, including suburbs;[185] about half of those reside in cities with populations over 50,000.[400] 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).[401] Many U.S. metropolitan populations are growing rapidly, particularly in the South and West.[402]
As of 2018[update], 52% of Americans age 15 and over were married, 6% were widowed, 10% were divorced, and 32% had never been married.[403] As of 2020, the total fertility rate stood at 1.64 children per woman.[404] In 2013, the average age at first birth was 26, and 41% of births were to unmarried women.[405] In 2019, the U.S. had the world's highest rate (23%) of children living in single-parent households; the rates in Canada and Mexico were 15% and 7%, respectively.[406]
Language
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.[407] Three states and four U.S. territories have recognized local or indigenous languages in addition to English, including Hawaii (Hawaiian),[408] Alaska (twenty Native languages),[l][409] South Dakota (Sioux),[410] 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.[411]
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).[412]
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.[413][414] About 18% of all Americans claim to speak both English and another language.[415]
Religion
The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees the free exercise of religion and forbids Congress from passing laws respecting its establishment.[417]
The United States has the world's largest Christian population.[418] In a 2014 survey, 70.6% of adults in the United States identified themselves as Christians;[419] Protestants in general accounted for 46.5%, while Catholics, at 20.8%, formed the largest single Christian denomination.[420] In 2014, 5.9% of the U.S. adult population claimed a non-Christian religion.[421] These include Judaism (1.9%), Islam (1.1%), Hinduism (0.7%), and Buddhism (0.7%).[421] 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.[420][422][423] Membership in a house of worship fell from 70% in 1999 to 47% in 2020, much of the decline related to the number of Americans expressing no religious preference. However, membership also fell among those who identified with a specific religious group.[424][425]
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%,[426] and the Southern Baptist Convention is the largest individual Protestant denomination at 5.3% of the U.S. population.[426] Apart from Baptists, other Protestant categories include nondenominational Protestants, Methodists, Pentecostals, unspecified Protestants, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Episcopalians/Anglicans, Quakers, Adventists, Holiness, Christian fundamentalists, Anabaptists, Pietists, and multiple others.[426]
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.[427]
Health
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that the United States had an average life expectancy at birth of 77.3 years in 2020 (74.5 years for men and 80.2 years for women), down 1.5 years from 2019. According to provisional figures, this was the lowest average U.S. life expectancy recorded by the CDC since 2003, the first overall decline since 2018, and "the largest one-year decline since World War II." Some three-quarters of the decrease was attributed to deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic, with most of the rest due to accidents and drug overdoses.[428] The U.S. also has one of the highest suicide rates among high-income countries.[429] Starting in 1998, the average life expectancy in the U.S. fell behind that of other wealthy industrialized countries, and Americans' "health disadvantage" gap has been increasing ever since.[430] From 1999 to 2019, more than 770,000 Americans died from drug overdoses.[431] Life expectancy was highest among Asians and Hispanics and lowest among blacks.[432][433]
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.[434][435] Obesity rates have more than doubled in the last 30 years and are the highest in the industrialized world.[436][437] Approximately one-third of the adult population is obese and an additional third is overweight.[438] Obesity-related type 2 diabetes is considered epidemic by health care professionals.[439]
In 2010, coronary artery disease, lung cancer, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases, and traffic collisions 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 consumtion. Alzheimer's disease, substance use disorders, kidney disease, cancer, and falls caused the most additional years of life lost over their age-adjusted 1990 per-capita rates.[440] Teenage pregnancy and abortion rates in the U.S. are substantially higher than in other Western nations, especially among blacks and Hispanics.[441]
Government-funded health care coverage for the poor (Medicaid, established in 1965) and for those age 65 and older (Medicare, begun in 1966) is available to Americans who meet the programs' income or age qualifications. The United States is the only developed nation without a system of universal health care and the reasons for this and extent to which it is a problem is a matter of debate. Similarly, a significant proportion of the population does not carry health insurance and the reasons for and extent to which it is a problem is also a matter of debate. In 2010, former President Obama passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act or ACA,[m] which ushered in the most sweeping set of reforms to America's health care system in nearly five decades since the creation of Medicare and Medicaid.[442] The CDC said that the law roughly halved the uninsured share of the population[443] and multiple studies have concluded that ACA had reduced the mortality of enrollees [444][445][446] but its legacy remains controversial.
The U.S. health care system far outspends that of any other nation, measured both in per capita spending and as a percentage of GDP but attains worse healthcare outcomes when compared to peer nations.[447] However, the U.S. is a global leader in medical innovation.[448]
Education
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 five or six (beginning with 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.[449]
About 12% of children are enrolled in parochial or nonsectarian private schools. 3.4% of children are homeschooled as of 2012[update].[450] The U.S. spends more on education per student than any nation in the world,[451] spending an average of $12,794 per year on public elementary and secondary school students in the 2016–2017 school year.[452] Some 80% of U.S. college students attend public universities.[453]
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.[454] The basic literacy rate is approximately 99%.[185][455] The United Nations assigns the United States an Education Index of 0.97, tying it for 12th in the world.[456]
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.[457][458][459] 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.[460] 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.[461][462] Despite some student loan forgiveness programs in place,[463] student loan debt has increased by 102% in the last decade,[464] and exceeded 1.7 trillion dollars as of 2021.[465][466][467]
Culture and society
The United States is home to many cultures and a wide variety of ethnic groups, traditions, and values.[469][470] Aside from the Native American, Native Hawaiian, and Native Alaskan populations, nearly all Americans or their ancestors immigrated or were imported as slaves within the past five centuries.[471] 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.[469][472] More recent immigration from Asia and especially Latin America has added to a cultural mix that has been described as a homogenizing melting pot, with immigrants contributing to, and often assimilating into, mainstream American culture.[469]
Americans have traditionally been characterized by a strong work ethic, competitiveness, and individualism,[473] 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.[474] 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.[475][476][477]
The American Dream, or the perception that Americans enjoy high social mobility, plays a key role in attracting immigrants.[478] Whether this perception is accurate has been a topic of debate.[479][480][481] While mainstream culture holds that the United States is a classless society,[482] scholars identify significant differences between the country's social classes, affecting socialization, language, and values.[483] Americans tend to greatly value socioeconomic achievement, but being ordinary or average is also generally seen as a positive attribute.[484]
Literature, philosophy, and visual art
In the 18th and early 19th centuries, American art and literature took most of its cues from Europe, contributing to Western culture. 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 recognized as an essential American poet.[485] 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."[486]
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.[487] 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.[488]
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.[489] 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.[490] 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.[491]
Food
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,[493] beef, and milk to create a distinctive American cuisine.[494][495]
Homegrown foods are part of a shared national menu on one of America's most popular holidays, Thanksgiving, when many Americans make or purchase traditional foods to celebrate the occasion.[496]
The American fast food industry, the world's largest,[497] pioneered the drive-through format in the 1940s.[498] Characteristic American dishes such as apple pie, fried chicken, doughnuts, french fries, macaroni and cheese, ice cream, pizza, hamburgers, and hot dogs derive from the recipes of various immigrants.[499][500] Mexican dishes such as burritos and tacos and pasta dishes freely adapted from Italian sources are widely consumed.[501] Americans drink three times as much coffee as tea.[502] Marketing by U.S. industries is largely responsible for making orange juice and milk standard breakfast beverages.[503][504]
Music
Among America's earliest composers was a man named William Billings who, born in Boston, composed patriotic hymns in the 1770s;[505] Billings was a part of the First New England School, who dominated American music during its earliest stages. Anthony Heinrich was the most prominent composer before the Civil War. From the mid- to late 1800s, John Philip Sousa of the late Romantic era composed numerous military songs—particularly marches—and is regarded as one of America's greatest composers.[506] By the late 19th century, the Second New England School (sometimes referred to specifically as the "Boston Six") became prominent representatives of the classical tradition, of whom John Knowles Paine was the leading figure.
Although little known at the time, Charles Ives' 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—eventually furthered by Leonard Bernstein—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 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.[507]
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.[508][509][510] 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, salsa, techno, and house music. Mid-20th-century American pop stars such as Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra,[511] and Elvis Presley became global celebrities,[507] as have artists of the late 20th century such as Michael Jackson, Prince, Madonna and Whitney Houston.[512][513] Popular entertainers of the 21st century include Eminem, Britney Spears, Beyoncé, Bruno Mars, Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, and Ariana Grande.[514][515]
Cinema
Hollywood, a northern district of Los Angeles, California, is one of the leaders in motion picture production.[516] The world's first commercial motion picture exhibition was given in New York City in 1894, using Thomas Edison's Kinetoscope.[517] 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.[518]
Director D. W. Griffith, an 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.[519] 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,[520] with screen actors such as John Wayne and Marilyn Monroe becoming iconic figures.[521][522] In the 1970s, "New Hollywood" or the "Hollywood Renaissance"[523] was defined by grittier films influenced by French and Italian realist pictures of the post-war period.[524] In more recent times, directors such as Steven Spielberg and George Lucas 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,[525][526] 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).[527] The Academy Awards, popularly known as the Oscars, have been held annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences since 1929,[528] and the Golden Globe Awards have been held annually since January 1944.[529]
Theater
Theater in the United States is part of the old European theatrical tradition and has been heavily influenced by the British theater.[530] The central hub of the American theater scene has been Manhattan, with its divisions of Broadway, Off-Broadway, and Off-Off-Broadway.[531] Many movie and television stars have gotten their big break working in New York productions. Outside New York City, many cities have professional regional or resident theater companies that produce their own seasons, with some works being produced regionally with hopes of eventually moving to New York. U.S. theater also has an active community theater culture, which relies mainly on local volunteers who may not be actively pursuing a theatrical career.[532]
Sports
American football is by several measures the most popular spectator sport in the United States;[534] 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.[535] Even on the collegiate level, college football games receive millions of viewers per television broadcast; most notably the College Football Playoff, which averages 25 million viewers.[536] 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)[537] and the National Hockey League (NHL). College football and basketball attract large audiences. The NCAA Final Four is one of the most watched sporting events.[538] 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 eleven 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).[539] 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.[540]
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.[541] As of 2021[update], the United States has won 2,629 medals at the Summer Olympic Games, more than any other country, and 330 in the Winter Olympic Games, the second most behind Norway.[542] 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.[543] Lacrosse and surfing arose from Native American and Native Hawaiian activities that predate Western contact.[544] The most-watched individual sports are golf and auto racing, particularly NASCAR and IndyCar.[545][546]
Mass media
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.[547] Americans listen to radio programming, also largely commercial, on average just over two and a half hours a day.[548][unreliable source?]
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.[549] 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[update], there are 15,433 licensed full-power radio stations in the U.S. according to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC).[550]
Well-known newspapers include The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and USA Today.[551] 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.[552] 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. The five most popular websites used in the U.S. are Google, YouTube, Amazon, Yahoo, and Facebook.[553]
More than 800 publications are produced in Spanish, the second most commonly used language in the United States behind English.[554][555]
See also
Notes
- ^ English is the official language of 32 states; English and Hawaiian are both official languages in Hawaii, and English and 20 indigenous languages are official in Alaska. Algonquian, Cherokee, and Sioux are among many other official languages in Native-controlled lands throughout the country. French is a de facto, but unofficial, language in Maine and Louisiana, while New Mexico law grants Spanish a special status. In five territories, English as well as one or more indigenous languages are official: Spanish in Puerto Rico, Samoan in American Samoa, and Chamorro in both Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands. Carolinian is also an official language in the Northern Mariana Islands.[4][5]
- ^ The historical and informal demonym Yankee has been applied to Americans, New Englanders, or northeasterners since the 18th century.
- ^ a b c The United States is the third-largest country by total area, after Russia and Canada, if its coastal and territorial water areas are included. If only its internal waters are included (bays, sounds, rivers, lakes, and the Great Lakes), the U.S. is the fourth-largest, after Russia, Canada, and China.
Coastal/territorial waters included: 3,796,742 sq mi (9,833,517 km2)[19]
Only internal waters included: 3,696,100 sq mi (9,572,900 km2)[20] - ^ a b The U.S. Census Bureau provides a continuously updated but unofficial population clock in addition to its decennial census and annual population estimates: [1]
- ^ Excludes Puerto Rico and the other unincorporated islands because they are counted separately in U.S. census statistics.
- ^ See Time in the United States for details about laws governing time zones in the United States.
- ^ See Date and time notation in the United States.
- ^ A single jurisdiction, the U.S. Virgin Islands, uses left-hand traffic.
- ^ The five major territories are American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the United States Virgin Islands. There are eleven smaller island areas without permanent populations: Baker Island, Howland Island, Jarvis Island, Johnston Atoll, Kingman Reef, Midway Atoll, and Palmyra Atoll. U.S. sovereignty over Bajo Nuevo Bank, Navassa Island, Serranilla Bank, and Wake Island is disputed.[18]
- ^ The United States has a maritime border with the United Kingdom because the U.S. Virgin Islands borders the British Virgin Islands.[21] Puerto Rico has a maritime border with the Dominican Republic.[22] American Samoa has a maritime border with the Cook Islands (see Cook Islands–United States Maritime Boundary Treaty).[23][24] American Samoa also has maritime borders with independent Samoa and Niue.[25]
- ^ People born in American Samoa are non-citizen U.S. nationals, unless one of their parents is a U.S. citizen.[241] In 2019, a court ruled that American Samoans are U.S. citizens, but the litigation is onging.[242][243]
- ^ Inupiaq, Siberian Yupik, Central Alaskan Yup'ik, Alutiiq, Unanga (Aleut), Denaʼina, Deg Xinag, Holikachuk, Koyukon, Upper Kuskokwim, Gwichʼin, Tanana, Upper Tanana, Tanacross, Hän, Ahtna, Eyak, Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian.
- ^ Also known less formally as Obamacare
References
- ^ 36 U.S.C. § 302
- ^ a b c "The Great Seal of the United States" (PDF). U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Public Affairs. 2003. Retrieved February 12, 2020.
- ^ An Act To make The Star-Spangled Banner the national anthem of the United States of America (H.R. 14). 71st United States Congress. March 3, 1931.
- ^ Cobarrubias 1983, p. 195.
- ^ García 2011, p. 167.
- ^ "2020 Census Illuminates Racial and Ethnic Composition of the Country". United States Census. Retrieved August 13, 2021.
- ^ "Race and Ethnicity in the United States: 2010 Census and 2020 Census". United States Census. Retrieved August 13, 2021.
- ^ "A Breakdown of 2020 Census Demographic Data". NPR. August 13, 2021.
- ^ "About Three-in-Ten U.S. Adults Are Now Religiously Unaffiliated". Measuring Religion in Pew Research Center's American Trends Panel. Pew Research Center. December 14, 2021. Retrieved December 21, 2021.
- ^ Compton's Pictured Encyclopedia and Fact-index: Ohio. 1963. p. 336.
- ^ "Surface water and surface water change". Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). 2015. Retrieved October 11, 2020.
- ^ Areas of the 50 states and the District of Columbia but not Puerto Rico nor other island territories per "State Area Measurements and Internal Point Coordinates". Census.gov. August 2010. Retrieved March 31, 2020.
reflect base feature updates made in the MAF/TIGER database through August, 2010.
- ^ a b Bureau, US Census. "New Vintage 2021 Population Estimates Available for the Nation, States and Puerto Rico". Census.gov.
{{cite web}}
:|last=
has generic name (help) - ^ "Census Bureau's 2020 Population Count". United States Census. Retrieved April 26, 2021. The 2020 census is as of April 1, 2020.
- ^ a b c d e f "World Economic Outlook Database, April 2022". IMF.org. International Monetary Fund. April 2022. Retrieved April 19, 2022.
- ^ "Income inequality in America is the highest it's been since Census Bureau started tracking it, data shows". The Washington Post. Retrieved July 27, 2020.
- ^ "Human Development Report 2020: The Next Frontier: Human Development and the Anthropocene" (PDF). United Nations Development Programme. December 15, 2020. Retrieved December 15, 2020.
- ^ U.S. State Department, Common Core Document to U.N. Committee on Human Rights, December 30, 2011, Item 22, 27, 80. And U.S. General Accounting Office Report, U.S. Insular Areas: application of the U.S. Constitution Archived November 3, 2013, at the Wayback Machine, November 1997, pp. 1, 6, 39n. Both viewed April 6, 2016.
- ^ "China". CIA World Factbook. Retrieved June 10, 2016.
- ^ "United States". Encyclopædia Britannica. Archived from the original on December 19, 2013. Retrieved January 31, 2010.
- ^ https://www.britannica.com/place/United-States-Virgin-Islands. Britannica.com. United States Virgin Islands. Retrieved July 3, 2020. Archived April 29, 2020, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ https://www.britannica.com/place/Puerto-RicoBritannica.com. Puerto Rico. Retrieved July 3, 2020. Archived July 2, 2020, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Anderson, Ewan W. (2003). International Boundaries: A Geopolitical Atlas. Routledge: New York. ISBN 9781579583750; OCLC 54061586
- ^ Charney, Jonathan I., David A. Colson, Robert W. Smith. (2005). International Maritime Boundaries, 5 vols. Hotei Publishing: Leiden.
- ^ https://www.pacgeo.org/static/maritimeboundaries/Pacgeo.org. Maritime Boundaries. Retrieved July 3, 2020. Archived July 31, 2020, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo (2003). Racism without Racists: Color-blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 2–29. ISBN 978-0-7425-1633-5.
Leigh B. Bienen (2010). Murder and Its Consequences: Essays on Capital Punishment in America (2nd ed.). Northwestern University Press. p. 143. ISBN 978-0-8101-2697-8.
"The U.S. Health Care System: An International Perspective - DPEAFLCIO". dpeaflcio.org.
""Contempt for the poor in US drives cruel policies," says UN expert". OHCHR. June 4, 2018. Retrieved June 5, 2018. - ^ Cohen, 2004: History and the Hyperpower
BBC, April 2008: Country Profile: United States of America
"Geographical trends of research output". Research Trends. Archived from the original on March 17, 2014. Retrieved March 16, 2014.
"The top 20 countries for scientific output". Open Access Week. Retrieved March 16, 2014.
"Granted patents". European Patent Office. Retrieved March 16, 2014. - ^ Sider 2007, p. 226.
- ^ Szalay, Jessie (September 20, 2017). "Amerigo Vespucci: Facts, Biography & Naming of America". Live Science. Retrieved June 23, 2019.
- ^ Jonathan Cohen. "The Naming of America: Fragments We've Shored Against Ourselves". Archived from the original on October 6, 2018. Retrieved February 3, 2014.
- ^ DeLear, Byron (July 4, 2013) Who coined 'United States of America'? Mystery might have intriguing answer. "Historians have long tried to pinpoint exactly when the name 'United States of America' was first used and by whom ... This latest find comes in a letter that Stephen Moylan, Esq., wrote to Col. Joseph Reed from the Continental Army Headquarters in Cambridge, Mass., during the Siege of Boston. The two men lived with Washington in Cambridge, with Reed serving as Washington's favorite military secretary and Moylan fulfilling the role during Reed's absence." Christian Science Monitor (Boston, MA).
- ^ Touba, Mariam (November 5, 2014) Who Coined the Phrase 'United States of America'? You May Never Guess "Here, on January 2, 1776, seven months before the Declaration of Independence and a week before the publication of Paine's Common Sense, Stephen Moylan, an acting secretary to General George Washington, spells it out, 'I should like vastly to go with full and ample powers from the United States of America to Spain' to seek foreign assistance for the cause." New-York Historical Society Museum & Library
- ^ Fay, John (July 15, 2016) The forgotten Irishman who named the 'United States of America' "According to the NY Historical Society, Stephen Moylan was the man responsible for the earliest documented use of the phrase 'United States of America'. But who was Stephen Moylan?" IrishCentral.com
- ^ ""To the inhabitants of Virginia", by A PLANTER. Dixon and Hunter's. April 6, 1776, Williamsburg, Virginia. Letter is also included in Peter Force's American Archives". The Virginia Gazette. Vol. 5, no. 1287. Archived from the original on December 19, 2014.
- ^ a b c Safire 2003, p. 199.
- ^ Mostert 2005, p. 18.
- ^ Wilson, Kenneth G. (1993). The Columbia guide to standard American English. New York: Columbia University Press. pp. 27–28. ISBN 978-0-231-06989-2.
- ^ Erlandson, Rick & Vellanoweth 2008, p. 19.
- ^ Savage 2011, p. 55.
- ^ Haviland, Walrath & Prins 2013, p. 219.
- ^ Waters & Stafford 2007, pp. 1122–1126.
- ^ Flannery 2015, pp. 173–185.
- ^ Gelo 2018, pp. 79–80.
- ^ Lockard 2010, p. 315.
- ^ Martinez, Sage & Ono 2016, p. 4.
- ^ Fagan 2016, p. 390.
- ^ Dean R. Snow (1994). The Iroquois. Blackwell Publishers, Ltd. ISBN 978-1-55786-938-8. Retrieved July 16, 2010.
- ^ a b c Perdue & Green 2005, p. 40.
- ^ a b Haines, Haines & Steckel 2000, p. 12.
- ^ Thornton 1998, p. 34.
- ^ Fernando Operé (2008). Indian Captivity in Spanish America: Frontier Narratives. University of Virginia Press. p. 1. ISBN 978-0-8139-2587-5.
- ^ "Not So Fast, Jamestown: St. Augustine Was Here First". NPR. February 28, 2015. Retrieved March 5, 2021.
- ^ Christine Marie Petto (2007). When France Was King of Cartography: The Patronage and Production of Maps in Early Modern France. Lexington Books. p. 125. ISBN 978-0-7391-6247-7.
- ^ James E. Seelye Jr.; Shawn Selby (2018). Shaping North America: From Exploration to the American Revolution [3 volumes]. ABC-CLIO. p. 344. ISBN 978-1-4408-3669-5.
- ^ Robert Neelly Bellah; Richard Madsen; William M. Sullivan; Ann Swidler; Steven M. Tipton (1985). Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life. University of California Press. p. 220. ISBN 978-0-520-05388-5. OL 7708974M.
- ^ Remini 2007, pp. 2–3
- ^ Johnson 1997, pp. 26–30
- ^ "Russians settle Alaska". History. Retrieved February 21, 2021.
- ^ Cook, Noble (1998). Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492–1650. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-62730-6.
- ^ Treuer, David. "The new book 'The Other Slavery' will make you rethink American history". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved October 10, 2019.
- ^ Stannard, 1993 p. xii
- ^ "The Cambridge encyclopedia of human paleopathology Archived February 8, 2016, at the Wayback Machine". Arthur C. Aufderheide, Conrado Rodríguez-Martín, Odin Langsjoen (1998). Cambridge University Press. p. 205. ISBN 978-0-521-55203-5
- ^ Bianchine, Russo, 1992 pp. 225–232
- ^ Ripper, 2008 p. 6
- ^ Ripper, 2008 p. 5
- ^ Calloway, 1998, p. 55
- ^ Joseph 2016, p. 590.
- ^ Thomas, Hugh (1997). The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade: 1440–1870. Simon and Schuster. pp. 516. ISBN 0-684-83565-7.
- ^ Tadman, 2000, p. 1534
- ^ Schneider, 2007, p. 484
- ^ Lien, 1913, p. 522
- ^ Davis, 1996, p. 7
- ^ Quirk, 2011, p. 195
- ^ Bilhartz, Terry D.; Elliott, Alan C. (2007). Currents in American History: A Brief History of the United States. M.E. Sharpe. ISBN 978-0-7656-1817-7.
- ^ Wood, Gordon S. (1998). The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787. UNC Press Books. p. 263. ISBN 978-0-8078-4723-7.
- ^ Walton, 2009, pp. 38–39
- ^ Foner, Eric (1998). The Story of American Freedom (1st ed.). W.W. Norton. pp. 4–5. ISBN 978-0-393-04665-6.
story of American freedom.
- ^ Walton, 2009, p. 35
- ^ Otis, James (1763). The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved. ISBN 9780665526787.
- ^ Humphrey, Carol Sue (2003). The Revolutionary Era: Primary Documents on Events from 1776 To 1800. Greenwood Publishing. pp. 8–10. ISBN 978-0-313-32083-5.
- ^ a b Fabian Young, Alfred; Nash, Gary B.; Raphael, Ray (2011). Revolutionary Founders: Rebels, Radicals, and Reformers in the Making of the Nation. Random House Digital. pp. 4–7. ISBN 978-0-307-27110-5.
- ^ Wait, Eugene M. (1999). America and the War of 1812. Nova Publishers. p. 78. ISBN 978-1-56072-644-9.
- ^ Boyer, 2007, pp. 192–193
- ^ Cogliano, Francis D. (2008). Thomas Jefferson: Reputation and Legacy. University of Virginia Press. p. 219. ISBN 978-0-8139-2733-6.
- ^ Walton, 2009, p. 43
- ^ Gordon, 2004, pp. 27,29
- ^ Clark, Mary Ann (May 2012). Then We'll Sing a New Song: African Influences on America's Religious Landscape. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 47. ISBN 978-1-4422-0881-0.
- ^ Heinemann, Ronald L., et al., Old Dominion, New Commonwealth: a history of Virginia 1607–2007, 2007 ISBN 978-0-8139-2609-4, p. 197
- ^ a b Carlisle, Rodney P.; Golson, J. Geoffrey (2007). Manifest Destiny and the Expansion of America. Turning Points in History Series. ABC-CLIO. p. 238. ISBN 978-1-85109-833-0.
- ^ Billington, Ray Allen; Ridge, Martin (2001). Westward Expansion: A History of the American Frontier. UNM Press. p. 22. ISBN 978-0-8263-1981-4.
- ^ "Louisiana Purchase" (PDF). National Park Services. Retrieved March 1, 2011.
- ^ Klose, Nelson; Jones, Robert F. (1994). United States History to 1877. Barron's Educational Series. p. 150. ISBN 978-0-8120-1834-9.
- ^ Morrison, Michael A. (April 28, 1997). Slavery and the American West: The Eclipse of Manifest Destiny and the Coming of the Civil War. University of North Carolina Press. pp. 13–21. ISBN 978-0-8078-4796-1.
- ^ Kemp, Roger L. (2010). Documents of American Democracy: A Collection of Essential Works. McFarland. p. 180. ISBN 978-0-7864-4210-2. Retrieved October 25, 2015.
- ^ McIlwraith, Thomas F.; Muller, Edward K. (2001). North America: The Historical Geography of a Changing Continent. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 61. ISBN 978-0-7425-0019-8. Retrieved October 25, 2015.
- ^ Wolf, Jessica. "Revealing the history of genocide against California's Native Americans". UCLA Newsroom. Retrieved July 8, 2018.
- ^ Rawls, James J. (1999). A Golden State: Mining and Economic Development in Gold Rush California. University of California Press. p. 20. ISBN 978-0-520-21771-3.
- ^ Paul Frymer, "Building an American Empire: The Era of Territorial and Political Expansion," (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017)
- ^ Black, Jeremy (2011). Fighting for America: The Struggle for Mastery in North America, 1519–1871. Indiana University Press. p. 275. ISBN 978-0-253-35660-4.
- ^ Stuart Murray (2004). Atlas of American Military History. Infobase Publishing. p. 76. ISBN 978-1-4381-3025-5. Retrieved October 25, 2015.
Harold T. Lewis (2001). Christian Social Witness. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 53. ISBN 978-1-56101-188-9. - ^ O'Brien, Patrick Karl (2002). Atlas of World History (Concise ed.). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. p. 184. ISBN 978-0-19-521921-0.
- ^ Vinovskis, Maris (1990). Toward A Social History of the American Civil War: Exploratory Essays. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. p. 4. ISBN 978-0-521-39559-5.
- ^ Shearer Davis Bowman (1993). Masters and Lords: Mid-19th-Century U.S. Planters and Prussian Junkers. Oxford UP. p. 221. ISBN 978-0-19-536394-4.
- ^ Jason E. Pierce (2016). Making the White Man's West: Whiteness and the Creation of the American West. University Press of Colorado. p. 256. ISBN 978-1-60732-396-9.
- ^ Marie Price; Lisa Benton-Short (2008). Migrants to the Metropolis: The Rise of Immigrant Gateway Cities. Syracuse University Press. p. 51. ISBN 978-0-8156-3186-6.
- ^ John Powell (2009). Encyclopedia of North American Immigration. Infobase Publishing. p. 74. ISBN 978-1-4381-1012-7. Retrieved October 25, 2015.
- ^ Winchester 2013, pp. 351, 385.
- ^ Michno, Gregory (2003). Encyclopedia of Indian Wars: Western Battles and Skirmishes, 1850–1890. Mountain Press Publishing. ISBN 978-0-87842-468-9.
- ^ "Toward a Market Economy". CliffsNotes. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Archived from the original on June 22, 2015. Retrieved December 23, 2014.
- ^ "Purchase of Alaska, 1867". Office of the Historian. U.S. Department of State. Retrieved December 23, 2014.
- ^ "The Spanish–American War, 1898". Office of the Historian. U.S. Department of State. Retrieved December 24, 2014.
- ^ Ryden, George Herbert. The Foreign Policy of the United States in Relation to Samoa. New York: Octagon Books, 1975.
- ^ "Virgin Islands History". Vinow.com. Retrieved January 5, 2018.
- ^ Kirkland, Edward. Industry Comes of Age: Business, Labor, and Public Policy (1961 ed.). pp. 400–405.
- ^ Zinn, 2005, pp. 321–357
- ^ Paige Meltzer, "The Pulse and Conscience of America" The General Federation and Women's Citizenship, 1945–1960," Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies (2009), Vol. 30 Issue 3, pp. 52–76.
- ^ James Timberlake, Prohibition and the Progressive Movement, 1900–1920 (Harvard UP, 1963)
- ^ George B. Tindall, "Business Progressivism: Southern Politics in the Twenties," South Atlantic Quarterly 62 (Winter 1963): 92–106.
- ^ McDuffie, Jerome; Piggrem, Gary Wayne; Woodworth, Steven E. (2005). U.S. History Super Review. Piscataway, NJ: Research & Education Association. p. 418. ISBN 978-0-7386-0070-3.
- ^ Voris, Jacqueline Van (1996). Carrie Chapman Catt: A Public Life. Women and Peace Series. New York City: Feminist Press at CUNY. p. vii. ISBN 978-1-55861-139-9.
Carrie Chapmann Catt led an army of voteless women in 1919 to pressure Congress to pass the constitutional amendment giving them the right to vote and convinced state legislatures to ratify it in 1920. ... Catt was one of the best-known women in the United States in the first half of the twentieth century and was on all lists of famous American women.
- ^ Winchester 2013, pp. 410–411.
- ^ Axinn, June; Stern, Mark J. (2007). Social Welfare: A History of the American Response to Need (7th ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon. ISBN 978-0-205-52215-6.
- ^ Lemann, Nicholas (1991). The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. p. 6. ISBN 978-0-394-56004-5.
- ^ James Noble Gregory (1991). American Exodus: The Dust Bowl Migration and Okie Culture in California. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-507136-8. Retrieved October 25, 2015.
"Mass Exodus From the Plains". American Experience. WGBH Educational Foundation. 2013. Retrieved October 5, 2014.
Fanslow, Robin A. (April 6, 1997). "The Migrant Experience". American Folklore Center. Library of Congress. Retrieved October 5, 2014.
Walter J. Stein (1973). California and the Dust Bowl Migration. Greenwood Press. ISBN 978-0-8371-6267-6. Retrieved October 25, 2015. - ^ The official WRA record from 1946 state it was 120,000 people. See War Relocation Authority (1946). The Evacuated People: A Quantitative Study. p. 8.. This number does not include people held in other camps such as those run by the DoJ or U.S. Army. Other sources may give numbers slightly more or less than 120,000.
- ^ Yamasaki, Mitch. "Pearl Harbor and America's Entry into World War II: A Documentary History" (PDF). World War II Internment in Hawaii. Archived from the original (PDF) on December 13, 2014. Retrieved January 14, 2015.
- ^ Stoler, Mark A. "George C. Marshall and the "Europe-First" Strategy, 1939–1951: A Study in Diplomatic as well as Military History" (PDF). Retrieved April 4, 2016.
- ^ Kelly, Brian. "The Four Policemen and. Postwar Planning, 1943–1945: The Collision of Realist and. Idealist Perspectives". Retrieved June 21, 2014.
- ^ Hoopes & Brinkley 1997, p. 100.
- ^ Gaddis 1972, p. 25.
- ^ Leland, Anne; Oboroceanu, Mari–Jana (February 26, 2010). "American War and Military Operations Casualties: Lists and Statistics" (PDF). Congressional Research Service. Retrieved February 18, 2011. p. 2.
- ^ Kennedy, Paul (1989). The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. New York: Vintage. p. 358. ISBN 978-0-679-72019-5
- ^ "The United States and the Founding of the United Nations, August 1941 – October 1945". U.S. Dept. of State, Bureau of Public Affairs, Office of the Historian. October 2005. Retrieved June 11, 2007.
- ^ Woodward, C. Vann (1947). The Battle for Leyte Gulf. New York: Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-60239-194-9.
- ^ "The Largest Naval Battles in Military History: A Closer Look at the Largest and Most Influential Naval Battles in World History". Military History. Norwich University. Retrieved March 7, 2015.
- ^ "Why did Japan surrender in World War II? | The Japan Times". The Japan Times. Retrieved February 8, 2017.
- ^ Pacific War Research Society (2006). Japan's Longest Day. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-4-7700-2887-7.
- ^ Wagg, Stephen; Andrews, David (2012). East Plays West: Sport and the Cold War. Routledge. p. 11. ISBN 978-1-134-24167-5.
- ^ Blakemore, Erin (March 22, 2019). "What was the Cold War?". National Geographic. Retrieved August 28, 2020.
- ^ Blakeley, 2009, p. 92
- ^ a b Collins, Michael (1988). Liftoff: The Story of America's Adventure in Space. New York: Grove Press. ISBN 9780802110114.
- ^ Chapman, Jessica M. (August 5, 2016), "Origins of the Vietnam War", Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History, Oxford University Press, doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.353, ISBN 978-0-19-932917-5, retrieved August 28, 2020
- ^ "Women in the Labor Force: A Databook" (PDF). U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. 2013. p. 11. Retrieved March 21, 2014.
- ^ Winchester 2013, pp. 305–308.
- ^ Blas, Elisheva. "The Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways" (PDF). societyforhistoryeducation.org. Society for History Education. Retrieved January 19, 2015.
- ^ Richard Lightner (2004). Hawaiian History: An Annotated Bibliography. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 141. ISBN 978-0-313-28233-1.
- ^ "The Civil Rights Movement". PBS.org. Retrieved January 5, 2019.
- ^ Dallek, Robert (2004). Lyndon B. Johnson: Portrait of a President. Oxford University Press. p. 169. ISBN 978-0-19-515920-2.
- ^ "Our Documents—Civil Rights Act (1964)". United States Department of Justice. Retrieved July 28, 2010.
- ^ "Remarks at the Signing of the Immigration Bill, Liberty Island, New York". October 3, 1965. Archived from the original on May 16, 2016. Retrieved January 1, 2012.
- ^ Levy, Daniel (January 19, 2018). "Behind the Protests Against the Vietnam War in 1968". Time Magazine. Retrieved May 5, 2021.
- ^ "Social Security". ssa.gov. Retrieved October 25, 2015.
- ^ Soss, 2010, p. 277
- ^ Fraser, 1989
- ^ Howell, Buddy Wayne (2006). The Rhetoric of Presidential Summit Diplomacy: Ronald Reagan and the U.S.-Soviet Summits, 1985–1988. Texas A&M University. p. 352. ISBN 978-0-549-41658-6.
- ^ Kissinger, Henry (2011). Diplomacy. Simon & Schuster. pp. 781–784. ISBN 978-1-4391-2631-8. Retrieved October 25, 2015.
Mann, James (2009). The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan: A History of the End of the Cold War. Penguin. p. 432. ISBN 978-1-4406-8639-9.
- ^ Hayes, 2009
- ^ Charles Krauthammer, "The Unipolar Moment", Foreign Affairs, 70/1, (Winter 1990/1), 23–33.
- ^ Judt, Tony; Lacorne, Denis (2005). With Us Or Against Us: Studies in Global Anti-Americanism. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 61. ISBN 978-1-4039-8085-4.
Richard J. Samuels (2005). Encyclopedia of United States National Security. Sage Publications. p. 666. ISBN 978-1-4522-6535-3.
Paul R. Pillar (2001). Terrorism and U.S. Foreign Policy. Brookings Institution Press. p. 57. ISBN 978-0-8157-0004-3.
Gabe T. Wang (2006). China and the Taiwan Issue: Impending War at Taiwan Strait. University Press of America. p. 179. ISBN 978-0-7618-3434-2.
Understanding the "Victory Disease", From the Little Bighorn to Mogadishu and Beyond. Diane Publishing. 2004. p. 1. ISBN 978-1-4289-1052-2.
Akis Kalaitzidis; Gregory W. Streich (2011). U.S. Foreign Policy: A Documentary and Reference Guide. ABC-CLIO. p. 313. ISBN 978-0-313-38375-5. - ^ "Persian Gulf War". Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. 2016. Retrieved January 24, 2017.
- ^ Winchester 2013, pp. 420–423.
- ^ Dale, Reginald (February 18, 2000). "Did Clinton Do It, or Was He Lucky?". The New York Times. Retrieved March 6, 2013.
Mankiw, N. Gregory (2008). Macroeconomics. Cengage Learning. p. 559. ISBN 978-0-324-58999-3. Retrieved October 25, 2015. - ^ "North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) | United States Trade Representative". www.ustr.gov. Archived from the original on March 17, 2013. Retrieved January 11, 2015.
Thakur; Manab Thakur Gene E Burton B N Srivastava (1997). International Management: Concepts and Cases. Tata McGraw-Hill Education. pp. 334–335. ISBN 978-0-07-463395-3. Retrieved October 25, 2015.
Akis Kalaitzidis; Gregory W. Streich (2011). U.S. Foreign Policy: A Documentary and Reference Guide. ABC-CLIO. p. 201. ISBN 978-0-313-38376-2. - ^ Flashback 9/11: As It Happened. Fox News. September 9, 2011. Retrieved March 6, 2013.
"America remembers Sept. 11 attacks 11 years later". CBS News. Associated Press. September 11, 2012. Archived from the original on October 17, 2013. Retrieved March 6, 2013.
"Day of Terror Video Archive". CNN. 2005. Retrieved March 6, 2013. - ^ Haelle, Tara. "9/11 Related Health Effects". Scientificamerican. Retrieved September 10, 2021.
- ^ Walsh, Kenneth T. (December 9, 2008). "The 'War on Terror' Is Critical to President George W. Bush's Legacy". U.S. News & World Report. Retrieved March 6, 2013.
Atkins, Stephen E. (2011). The 9/11 Encyclopedia: Second Edition. ABC-CLIO. p. 872. ISBN 978-1-59884-921-9. Retrieved October 25, 2015. - ^ Wong, Edward (February 15, 2008). "Overview: The Iraq War". The New York Times. Retrieved March 7, 2013.
Johnson, James Turner (2005). The War to Oust Saddam Hussein: Just War and the New Face of Conflict. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 159. ISBN 978-0-7425-4956-2. Retrieved October 25, 2015.
Durando, Jessica; Green, Shannon Rae (December 21, 2011). "Timeline: Key moments in the Iraq War". USA Today. Associated Press. Archived from the original on September 4, 2020. Retrieved March 7, 2013. - ^ Cooper, Helene (May 1, 2011). "Obama Announces Killing of Osama bin Laden". The New York Times. Archived from the original on May 2, 2011.
- ^ Wallison, Peter (2015). Hidden in Plain Sight: What Really Caused the World's Worst Financial Crisis and Why It Could Happen Again. Encounter Books. ISBN 978-978-59407-7-0.
- ^ Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (2011). Financial Crisis Inquiry Report (PDF). ISBN 978-1-60796-348-6.
- ^ Taylor, John B. (January 2009). "The Financial Crisis and the Policy Responses: An Empirical Analysis of What Went Wrong" (PDF). Hoover Institution Economics Paper Series. Retrieved January 21, 2017.
- ^ Hilsenrath, Jon; Ng, Serena; Paletta, Damian (September 18, 2008). "Worst Crisis Since '30s, With No End Yet in Sight". The Wall Street Journal.
- ^ Altman, Roger C. "The Great Crash, 2008". Foreign Affairs. Archived from the original on December 23, 2008. Retrieved February 27, 2009.
- ^ "Barack Obama: Face Of New Multiracial Movement?". NPR. November 12, 2008.
- ^ Washington, Jesse; Rugaber, Chris (July 10, 2011). "African-American Economic Gains Reversed By Great Recession". Associated Press. Archived from the original on June 16, 2013.
- ^ Smith, Harrison (November 9, 2016). "Donald Trump is elected president of the United States". The Washington Post. Retrieved October 27, 2020.
- ^ CDC (February 11, 2020). "Cases, Data, and Surveillance". Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Retrieved December 10, 2021.
- ^ Lemire, Jonathan (November 7, 2020). "Biden defeats Trump for White House, Say's time to heal". Associated Press. Retrieved January 20, 2021.
- ^ Peñaloza, Marisa (January 6, 2021). "Trump Supporters Storm U.S. Capitol, Clash with Police". NPR. NPR. Retrieved January 16, 2021.
- ^ "Field Listing: Area". The World Factbook. cia.gov. Archived from the original on July 7, 2020. Retrieved April 21, 2020.
- ^ "State Area Measurements and Internal Point Coordinates—Geography—U.S. Census Bureau". State Area Measurements and Internal Point Coordinates. U.S. Department of Commerce. Retrieved September 11, 2017.
- ^ "2010 Census Area" (PDF). census.gov. U.S. Census Bureau. p. 41. Retrieved January 18, 2015.
- ^ "Area". The World Factbook. Central Intelligence Agency. Archived from the original on January 31, 2014. Retrieved January 15, 2015.
- ^ "United States". Encyclopædia Britannica. (given in square miles, excluding)
- ^ a b c "United States". The World Factbook. Central Intelligence Agency. January 3, 2018. Retrieved January 8, 2018.
- ^ "Geographic Regions of Georgia". Georgia Info. Digital Library of Georgia. Retrieved December 24, 2014.
- ^ a b Lew, Alan. "PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE US". GSP 220—Geography of the United States. North Arizona University. Archived from the original on April 9, 2016. Retrieved December 24, 2014.
- ^ Harms, Nicole. "Facts About the Rocky Mountain Range". Travel Tips. USA Today. Retrieved December 24, 2014.
- ^ "Great Basin". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved December 24, 2014.
- ^ "Mount Whitney, California". Peakbagger. Retrieved December 24, 2014.
- ^ "Find Distance and Azimuths Between 2 Sets of Coordinates (Badwater 36-15-01-N, 116-49-33-W and Mount Whitney 36-34-43-N, 118-17-31-W)". Federal Communications Commission. Retrieved December 24, 2014.
- ^ Poppick, Laura (August 28, 2013). "US Tallest Mountain's Surprising Location Explained". LiveScience. Retrieved May 2, 2015.
- ^ O'Hanlon, Larry (March 14, 2005). "America's Explosive Park". Discovery Channel. Archived from the original on March 14, 2005. Retrieved April 5, 2016.
- ^ Boyden, Jennifer. "Climate Regions of the United States". Travel Tips. USA Today. Retrieved December 24, 2014.
- ^ "World Map of Köppen–Geiger Climate Classification" (PDF). Retrieved August 19, 2015.
- ^ Perkins, Sid (May 11, 2002). "Tornado Alley, USA". Science News. Archived from the original on July 1, 2007. Retrieved September 20, 2006.
- ^ Rice, Doyle. "USA has the world's most extreme weather". USA Today. Retrieved May 17, 2020.
- ^ Len McDougall (2004). The Encyclopedia of Tracks and Scats: A Comprehensive Guide to the Trackable Animals of the United States and Canada. Lyons Press. p. 325. ISBN 978-1-59228-070-4.
- ^ Morin, Nancy. "Vascular Plants of the United States" (PDF). Plants. National Biological Service. Archived from the original (PDF) on July 24, 2013. Retrieved October 27, 2008.
- ^ Osborn, Liz. "Number of Native Species in United States". Current Results Nexus. Retrieved January 15, 2015.
- ^ "Numbers of Insects (Species and Individuals)". Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved January 20, 2009.
- ^ Park, National. "National Park FAQ". nps. Retrieved May 8, 2015.
- ^ Lipton, Eric; Krauss, Clifford (August 23, 2012). "Giving Reins to the States Over Drilling". The New York Times. Retrieved January 18, 2015.
- ^ Vincent, Carol H.; Hanson, Laura A.; Argueta, Carla N. (March 3, 2017). Federal Land Ownership: Overview and Data (Report). Congressional Research Service. p. 2. Retrieved June 18, 2020.
- ^ Gorte, Ross W.; Vincent, Carol Hardy.; Hanson, Laura A.; Marc R., Rosenblum. "Federal Land Ownership: Overview and Data" (PDF). fas.org. Congressional Research Service. Retrieved January 18, 2015.
- ^ "Chapter 6: Federal Programs to Promote Resource Use, Extraction, and Development". doi.gov. U.S. Department of the Interior. Archived from the original on March 18, 2015. Retrieved January 19, 2015.
- ^ The National Atlas of the United States of America (January 14, 2013). "Forest Resources of the United States". Nationalatlas.gov. Archived from the original on May 7, 2009. Retrieved January 13, 2014.
- ^ "Land Use Changes Involving Forestry in the United States: 1952 to 1997, With Projections to 2050" (PDF). 2003. Retrieved January 13, 2014.
- ^ Daynes & Sussman, 2010, pp. 3, 72, 74–76, 78
- ^ Hays, Samuel P. (2000). A History of Environmental Politics since 1945.
- ^ Collin, Robert W. (2006). The Environmental Protection Agency: Cleaning Up America's Act. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 1. ISBN 978-0-313-33341-5. Retrieved October 25, 2015.
- ^ Turner, James Morton (2012). The Promise of Wilderness
- ^ Endangered species Fish and Wildlife Service. General Accounting Office, Diane Publishing. 2003. p. 1. ISBN 978-1-4289-3997-4. Retrieved October 25, 2015.
- ^ Ritchie, Hannah; Roser, Max; Rosado, Pablo (May 11, 2020). "CO₂ and Greenhouse Gas Emissions". Our World in Data.
- ^ US EPA, OAR (June 27, 2016). "Climate Change Indicators: Weather and Climate". www.epa.gov. Retrieved June 19, 2022.
- ^ "What Is the Greenest Country in the World?". Atlas & Boots. Environmental Performance Index. June 6, 2020. Retrieved November 18, 2020.
- ^ "United States of America". Global Climate Action – NAZCA. United Nations. Retrieved November 18, 2020.
- ^ Nugent, Ciara (November 4, 2020). "The U.S. Just Officially Left the Paris Agreement. Can it Be a Leader in the Climate Fight Again?". Times. Retrieved November 18, 2020.
- ^ "Biden announces return to global climate accord, new curbs on U.S. oil industry". Money News. Reuters. January 20, 2021. Retrieved February 9, 2021.
- ^ "Common Core Document of the United States of America". U.S. Department of State. December 30, 2011. Retrieved July 10, 2015.
- ^ The New York Times 2007, p. 670.
- ^ Onuf 2010, p. xvii.
- ^ Scheb, John M.; Scheb, John M. II (2002). An Introduction to the American Legal System. Florence, KY: Delmar, p. 6. ISBN 978-0-7668-2759-2.
- ^ Francis, Ellen (February 10, 2022). "Global freedoms have hit a 'dismal' record low, with pandemic restrictions making things worse, report says". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved February 18, 2022.
- ^ "Corruption Perceptions Index 2019" (PDF). transparency.org. Transparency International. p. 12 & 13. Retrieved February 7, 2020.
- ^ Killian, Johnny H. "Constitution of the United States". The Office of the Secretary of the Senate. Retrieved February 11, 2012.
- ^ Feldstein, Fabozzi, 2011, p. 9
- ^ Schultz, 2009, pp. 164, 453, 503
- ^ Schultz, 2009, p. 38
- ^ "The Legislative Branch". United States Diplomatic Mission to Germany. Retrieved August 20, 2012.
- ^ "The Process for impeachment". ThinkQuest. Archived from the original on April 8, 2013. Retrieved August 20, 2012.
- ^ "The Executive Branch". The White House. Retrieved February 11, 2017.
- ^ Kermit L. Hall; Kevin T. McGuire (2005). Institutions of American Democracy: The Judicial Branch. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-988374-5.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (2013). Learn about the United States: Quick Civics Lessons for the Naturalization Test. Government Printing Office. p. 4. ISBN 978-0-16-091708-0.
Bryon Giddens-White (2005). The Supreme Court and the Judicial Branch. Heinemann Library. ISBN 978-1-4034-6608-2.
Charles L. Zelden (2007). The Judicial Branch of Federal Government: People, Process, and Politics. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-1-85109-702-9. Retrieved October 25, 2015.
"Federal Courts". United States Courts. Retrieved October 19, 2014. - ^ a b c Locker, Melissa (March 9, 2015). "Watch John Oliver Cast His Ballot for Voting Rights for U.S. Territories". Time. Retrieved November 11, 2019.
- ^ "What is the Electoral College". National Archives. Retrieved August 21, 2012.
- ^ Cossack, Roger (July 13, 2000). "Beyond politics: Why Supreme Court justices are appointed for life". CNN. Archived from the original on July 12, 2012.
- ^ 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(36) and 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(38) U.S. Federal Code, Immigration and Nationality Act. 8 U.S.C. § 1101a
- ^ "Electoral College Fast Facts | U.S. House of Representatives: History, Art & Archives". history.house.gov. Retrieved August 21, 2015.
- ^ "Frequently Asked Questions". U.S. Department of the Interior Indian Affairs. Retrieved January 16, 2016.
- ^ "Tribal Geography in Relation to State Boundaries".
- ^ a b "American Samoa and the Citizenship Clause: A Study in Insular Cases Revisionism". harvardlawreview.org. Retrieved January 5, 2018.
- ^ Alvarez, Priscilla (December 12, 2019). "Federal judge rules American Samoans are US citizens by birth". CNN. Retrieved October 6, 2020.
- ^ Romboy, Dennis (December 13, 2019). "Judge puts citizenship ruling for American Samoans on hold". KSL.com. Retrieved October 6, 2020.
- ^ Keating, Joshua (June 5, 2015). "How Come American Samoans Still Don't Have U.S. Citizenship at Birth?" – via Slate.
- ^ Etheridge, Eric; Deleith, Asger (August 19, 2009). "A Republic or a Democracy?". The New York Times blogs. Retrieved November 7, 2010.
The US system seems essentially a two-party system. ...
- ^ "Presidential Election of 1912". 270towin.com. Retrieved November 9, 2021.
- ^ "How Ross Perot Changed Political Campaigns". time.com. Retrieved June 21, 2022.
- ^ Avaliktos, Neal (2004). The Election Process Revisited. Nova Publishers. p. 111. ISBN 978-1-59454-054-7.
- ^ David Mosler; Robert Catley (1998). America and Americans in Australia. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 83. ISBN 978-0-275-96252-4. Retrieved April 11, 2016.
- ^ Grigsby, Ellen (2008). Analyzing Politics: An Introduction to Political Science. Cengage Learning. pp. 106–107. ISBN 978-0-495-50112-1.
- ^ "U.S. Senate: Leadership & Officers". www.senate.gov. Retrieved January 10, 2019.
- ^ "Leadership | House.gov". www.house.gov. Retrieved January 10, 2019.
- ^ "Congressional Profile". Office of the Clerk of the United States House of Representatives.
- ^ "U.S. Governors". National Governors Association. Retrieved January 14, 2015.
- ^ "What is the G8?". University of Toronto. Retrieved February 11, 2012.
- ^ Kan, Shirley A. (August 29, 2014). "Taiwan: Major U.S. Arms Sales Since 1990" (PDF). Federation of American Scientist. Retrieved October 19, 2014.
"Taiwan's Force Modernization: The American Side". Defense Industry Daily. September 11, 2014. Retrieved October 19, 2014. - ^ Dumbrell, John; Schäfer, Axel (2009). America's 'Special Relationships': Foreign and Domestic Aspects of the Politics of Alliance. p. 45. ISBN 978-0-203-87270-3. Retrieved October 25, 2015.
- ^ Ek, Carl & Ian F. Fergusson (September 3, 2010). "Canada–U.S. Relations" (PDF). Congressional Research Service. Retrieved August 28, 2011.
- ^ Vaughn, Bruce (August 8, 2008). Australia: Background and U.S. Relations. Congressional Research Service. OCLC 70208969.
- ^ Vaughn, Bruce (May 27, 2011). "New Zealand: Background and Bilateral Relations with the United States" (PDF). Congressional Research Service. Retrieved August 28, 2011.
- ^ Lum, Thomas (January 3, 2011). "The Republic of the Philippines and U.S. Interests" (PDF). Congressional Research Service. Retrieved August 3, 2011.
- ^ Chanlett-Avery, Emma; et al. (June 8, 2011). "Japan-U.S. Relations: Issues for Congress" (PDF). Congressional Research Service. Retrieved August 28, 2011.
- ^ Mark E. Manyin; Emma Chanlett-Avery; Mary Beth Nikitin (July 8, 2011). "U.S.–South Korea Relations: Issues for Congress" (PDF). Congressional Research Service. Retrieved August 28, 2011.
- ^ Zanotti, Jim (July 31, 2014). "Israel: Background and U.S. Relations" (PDF). Congressional Research Service. Retrieved September 12, 2014.
- ^ "U.S. Relations With Poland".
- ^ "The Untapped Potential of the US-Colombia Partnership". Atlantic Council. September 26, 2019. Retrieved May 30, 2020.
- ^ "U.S. Relations With Colombia". United States Department of State. Retrieved May 30, 2020.
- ^ Charles L. Zelden (2007). The Judicial Branch of Federal Government: People, Process, and Politics. ABC-CLIO. p. 217. ISBN 978-1-85109-702-9. Retrieved October 25, 2015.
Loren Yager; Emil Friberg; Leslie Holen (2003). Foreign Relations: Migration from Micronesian Nations Has Had Significant Impact on Guam, Hawaii, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. Diane Publishing. p. 7. ISBN 978-0-7567-3394-0. - ^ Piketty, Thomas; Saez, Emmanuel (2007). "How Progressive is the U.S. Federal Tax System? A Historical and International Perspective" (PDF). Journal of Economic Perspectives. 21: 11. doi:10.1257/jep.21.1.3. S2CID 5160267.
- ^ Lowrey, Annie (January 4, 2013). "Tax Code May Be the Most Progressive Since 1979". The New York Times. Retrieved August 28, 2020.
- ^ Konish, Lorie (June 30, 2018). "More Americans are considering cutting their ties with the US—here's why". CNBC. Retrieved August 23, 2018.
- ^ Power, Julie (March 3, 2018). "Tax fears: US-Aussie dual citizens provide IRS with details of $184 billion". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved August 23, 2018.
- ^ Porter, Eduardo (August 14, 2012). "America's Aversion to Taxes". The New York Times. Retrieved August 15, 2012.
In 1965, taxes collected by federal, state and municipal governments amounted to 24.7 percent of the nation's output. In 2010, they amounted to 24.8 percent. Excluding Chile and Mexico, the United States raises less tax revenue, as a share of the economy, than every other industrial country.
- ^ Ingraham, Christopher (October 8, 2019). "For the first time in history, U.S. billionaires paid a lower tax rate than the working class last year". The Washington Post. Retrieved October 9, 2019.
- ^ "CBO Historical Tables-February 2013". Congressional Budget Office. February 5, 2013. Retrieved April 23, 2013.
- ^ "America Owes the Largest Share of Global Debt". U.S. News. October 23, 2018.
- ^ "Country Comparison: Public Debt – The World Factbook". Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Archived from the original on June 13, 2007. Retrieved May 10, 2020.
- ^ "FRED Graph". Federal Reserve Economic Data. September 21, 2020.
- ^ Thornton, Daniel L. (November–December 2012). "The U.S. Deficit/Debt Problem: A Longer–Run Perspective" (PDF). Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
- ^ "Fitch revises U.S. outlook to negative; affirms AAA rating". reuters.com. Reuters. July 31, 2020. Retrieved September 21, 2020.
- ^ "United States Coast Guard | History & Facts". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved September 27, 2021.
- ^ a b The Military Balance 2019. London: International Institute for Strategic Studies. 2019. p. 47. ISBN 978-1-85743-988-5. Archived from the original on September 22, 2020.
- ^ "READ: James Mattis' resignation letter". CNN. December 21, 2018. Archived from the original on September 22, 2020. Retrieved January 8, 2020.
- ^ "What does Selective Service provide for America?". Selective Service System. Archived from the original on September 15, 2012. Retrieved February 11, 2012.
- ^ "First Peacetime Draft Enacted Just Before World War II". Department of Defense. April 7, 2020. Retrieved November 1, 2020.
- ^ "With 'historic' bomber flights on opposite sides of the planet, the US Air Force is sending a message to friends and foes". Business Insider. Retrieved March 22, 2021.
- ^ "Noble Eagle Without End". Retrieved February 1, 2005.
- ^ "The Ups and Downs of Close Air Support". Retrieved December 1, 2019.
- ^ "Building the Space Range of the Future". Retrieved May 1, 2020.
- ^ "Global Positioning System". www.schriever.spaceforce.mil.
- ^ "Space surveillance technologies a top need for U.S. military". November 22, 2020. Retrieved November 22, 2020.
- ^ Harris, Johnny (May 18, 2015). "Why does the US have 800 military bases around the world?". Vox. Archived from the original on September 23, 2020. Retrieved September 23, 2020.
- ^ "Active Duty Military Personnel Strengths by Regional Area and by Country (309A)" (PDF). Department of Defense. March 31, 2010. Archived from the original (PDF) on July 24, 2013. Retrieved October 7, 2010.
- ^ a b "World military expenditure grows to $1.8 trillion in 2018". sipri.org. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. April 19, 2019. Archived from the original on September 23, 2020. Retrieved September 23, 2020.
- ^ "Federal R&D Budget Dashboard". American Association for the Advancement of Science. Retrieved March 25, 2019.
- ^ "Fiscal Year 2013 Historical Tables" (PDF). Office of Management and Budget. Retrieved November 24, 2012 – via National Archives.
- ^ IISS 2020, pp. 46
- ^ Reichmann, Kelsey (June 16, 2019). "Here's how many nuclear warheads exist, and which countries own them". defensenews.com. Sightline Media Group. Archived from the original on September 23, 2020. Retrieved September 23, 2020.
- ^ "U.S. Federal Law Enforcement Agencies, Who Governs & What They Do". Chiff.com. Archived from the original on February 10, 2014. Retrieved November 10, 2021.
- ^ There are 17,985 U.S. police agencies in the United States which include city police departments, county sheriff's offices, state police/highway patrol and federal law enforcement agencies, Politifact, Charles Ramsey, July 10, 2016. Retrieved November 10, 2021.
- ^ Grinshteyn, Erin; Hemenway, David (March 2016). "Violent Death Rates: The US Compared with Other High-income OECD Countries, 2010". The American Journal of Medicine. 129 (3): 226–273. doi:10.1016/j.amjmed.2015.10.025. PMID 26551975. Retrieved June 18, 2017.
- ^ Rawlinson, Kevin (December 7, 2017). "Global homicide rate rises for first time in more than a decade". The Guardian. Retrieved December 26, 2018.
- ^ Haymes et al., 2014, p. 389
- ^ "US Department of Justice, Oct. 22, 2020" (PDF).
- ^ a b Sawyer, Wendy; Wagner, Peter (March 24, 2020). Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2020 (Report). Prison Policy Initiative. Retrieved January 23, 2021.
- ^ "Federal Bureau of Prisons: Statistics". Federal Bureau of Prisons. Retrieved March 4, 2015.
- ^ Donna, Selman; Leighton, Paul (2010). Punishment for Sale: Private Prisons, Big Business, and the Incarceration Binge. New York City: Rowman & Littlefield. p. xi. ISBN 978-1-4422-0173-6.
Harcourt, Bernard (2012). The Illusion of Free Markets: Punishment and the Myth of Natural Order. Harvard University Press. pp. 235 & 236. ISBN 978-0-674-06616-8.
Gottschalk, Marie (2014). Caught: The Prison State and the Lockdown of American Politics. Princeton University Press. p. 70. ISBN 978-0-691-16405-2. - ^ Lauren-Brooke Eisen. "Breaking Down Biden's Order to Eliminate DOJ Private Prison Contracts". Brennan Center for Justice. Retrieved September 25, 2021.
- ^ "Executive Order on Reforming Our Incarceration System to Eliminate the Use of Privately Operated Criminal Detention Facilities". The White House. January 26, 2021. Retrieved September 25, 2021.
- ^ Tolan, Casey (November 12, 2021). "Biden vowed to close federal private prisons, but prison companies are finding loopholes to keep them open". CNN. Retrieved December 3, 2021.
- ^ Mikaila Mariel Lemonik Arthur (2020). Law and Justice around the World: A Comparative Approach. Univ of California Press. pp. 179–180. ISBN 978-0-520-30001-9.
- ^ Connor, Tracy; Chuck, Elizabeth (May 28, 2015). "Nebraska's Death Penalty Repealed With Veto Override". NBC News. Retrieved June 11, 2015.
- ^ Simpson, Ian (May 2, 2013). "Maryland becomes latest U.S. state to abolish death penalty". Reuters. Retrieved April 6, 2016.
- ^ a b "State by State". Death Penalty Information Center. Retrieved October 6, 2020.
- ^ "Death Sentences and Executions 2019". Amnesty International USA. 2019. Retrieved May 30, 2020.
- ^ "Searchable Execution Database". Death Penalty Information Center. Retrieved October 10, 2012.
- ^ DPIC adds Eleven cases to the Innocence List bringing national death-row exonerations to 185, Death Penalty Information Center, Robert Durham, February 18, 2021. Retrieved November 9, 2021.
- ^ "Report for Selected Countries and Subjects". www.imf.org.
- ^ PROBASCO, Jim. "USA National Debt". Investopedia. Retrieved October 20, 2021.
- ^ "The World Factbook". CIA.gov. Central Intelligence Agency. Archived from the original on October 4, 2008. Retrieved April 12, 2018.
- ^ "Trade Statistics". Greyhill Advisors. Retrieved October 6, 2011.
- ^ "Top Ten Countries with which the U.S. Trades". U.S. Census Bureau. August 2009. Retrieved October 12, 2009.
- ^ "U.S. trade in goods with World, Seasonally Adjusted" (PDF). United States Census Bureau. June 1, 2021. Retrieved September 7, 2021.
- ^ Hagopian, Kip; Ohanian, Lee (August 1, 2012). "The Mismeasure of Inequality". Policy Review (174). Archived from the original on December 3, 2013. Retrieved January 23, 2020.
- ^ "United Nations Statistics Division—National Accounts". unstats.un.org. Retrieved June 1, 2018.
- ^ "Currency Composition of Official Foreign Exchange Reserves" (PDF). International Monetary Fund. Archived from the original (PDF) on October 7, 2014. Retrieved April 9, 2012.
- ^ "GDP by Industry". Greyhill Advisors. Retrieved October 13, 2011.
- ^ "USA Economy in Brief". U.S. Dept. of State, International Information Programs. Archived from the original on March 12, 2008.
- ^ Isabelle Joumard; Mauro Pisu; Debbie Bloch (2012). "Tackling income inequality The role of taxes and transfers" (PDF). OECD. Retrieved May 21, 2015.
- ^ Ray, Rebecca; Sanes, Milla; Schmitt, John (May 2013). "No-Vacation Nation Revisited" (PDF). Center for Economic and Policy Research. Retrieved September 8, 2013.
- ^ Bernard, Tara Siegel (February 22, 2013). "In Paid Family Leave, U.S. Trails Most of the Globe". The New York Times. Retrieved August 27, 2013.
- ^ Vasel, Kathryn (January 20, 2015). "Who doesn't get paid sick leave?". CNN. Retrieved January 23, 2021.
- ^ Hounshell, David A. (1984), From the American System to Mass Production, 1800–1932: The Development of Manufacturing Technology in the United States, Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press, ISBN 978-0-8018-2975-8, LCCN 83016269, OCLC 1104810110
- ^ "Research and Development (R&D) Expenditures by Source and Objective: 1970 to 2004". U.S. Census Bureau. Archived from the original on February 10, 2012. Retrieved June 19, 2007.
- ^ MacLeod, Donald (March 21, 2006). "Britain Second in World Research Rankings". The Guardian. London. Retrieved May 14, 2006.
- ^ Allen, Gregory (February 6, 2019). "Understanding China's AI Strategy". Center for a New American Security.
- ^ "Thomas Edison's Most Famous Inventions". Thomas A Edison Innovation Foundation. Archived from the original on March 16, 2016. Retrieved January 21, 2015.
- ^ Benedetti, François (December 17, 2003). "100 Years Ago, the Dream of Icarus Became Reality". Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI). Archived from the original on September 12, 2007. Retrieved August 15, 2007.
- ^ Fraser, Gordon (2012). The Quantum Exodus: Jewish Fugitives, the Atomic Bomb, and the Holocaust. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-959215-9.
- ^ 10 Little Americans. ISBN 978-0-615-14052-0. Retrieved September 15, 2014 – via Google Books.
- ^ "NASA's Apollo technology has changed the history". Sharon Gaudin. July 20, 2009. Retrieved September 15, 2014.
- ^ Goodheart, Adam (July 2, 2006). "Celebrating July 2: 10 Days That Changed History". The New York Times.
- ^ Sawyer, Robert Keith (2012). Explaining Creativity: The Science of Human Innovation. Oxford University Press. p. 256. ISBN 978-0-19-973757-4.
- ^ "Global Innovation Index 2021". World Intellectual Property Organization. United Nations. Retrieved December 2, 2021.
- ^ "Population Clock". U.S. and World Population Clock. U.S. Department of Commerce. May 16, 2020. Retrieved May 24, 2020.
The United States population on May 23, 2020 was: 329,686,270
- ^ "Global Wealth Report". Credit Suisse. October 2018. Retrieved February 11, 2019.
- ^ "Forbes Billionaires 2021: The Richest People in the World". Forbes. Retrieved July 14, 2021.
- ^ "Coronavirus Reduces Millionaire Count". spectrem.com. Retrieved July 14, 2021.
- ^ "Research Institute Global wealth databook 2019" (PDF). October 23, 2019. Archived from the original (PDF) on October 23, 2019. Retrieved August 4, 2021.
- ^ "Global Food Security Index". London: The Economist Intelligence Unit. September 20, 2021. Retrieved September 20, 2021.
- ^ Rector, Robert; Sheffield, Rachel (September 13, 2011). "Understanding Poverty in the United States: Surprising Facts About America's Poor". Heritage Foundation. Retrieved April 8, 2013.
- ^ Nations, United. "Human Development Index (HDI) | Human Development Reports". UNHDP. Retrieved December 27, 2018.
- ^ "Trends in Family Wealth, 1989 to 2013". Congressional Budget Office. August 18, 2016.
- ^ Piketty, Thomas (2014). Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Belknap Press. p. 257. ISBN 978-0-674-43000-6
- ^ Egan, Matt (September 27, 2017). "Record inequality: The top 1% controls 38.6% of America's wealth". CNN Money. Retrieved October 12, 2017.
- ^ Van Dam, Andrew (July 4, 2018). "Is it great to be a worker in the U.S.? Not compared with the rest of the developed world". The Washington Post. Retrieved July 12, 2018.
- ^ Long, Heather (September 12, 2017). "U.S. middle-class incomes reached highest-ever level in 2016, Census Bureau says". The Washington Post. Retrieved November 11, 2019.
- ^ Alvaredo, Facundo; Atkinson, Anthony B.; Piketty, Thomas; Saez, Emmanuel (2013). "The Top 1 Percent in International and Historical Perspective". Journal of Economic Perspectives. 27 (Summer 2013): 3–20. doi:10.1257/jep.27.3.3. hdl:11336/27462. S2CID 154466898.
- ^ Smeeding, T.M. (2005). "Public Policy: Economic Inequality and Poverty: The United States in Comparative Perspective". Social Science Quarterly. 86: 955–983. doi:10.1111/j.0038-4941.2005.00331.x. S2CID 154642286.
- ^ Saez, Emmanuel (June 30, 2016). "Striking it Richer: The Evolution of Top Incomes in the United States" (PDF). University of California, Berkeley. Retrieved September 15, 2017.
- ^ Gilens & Page 2014.
- ^ Bartels, Larry (2009). "Economic Inequality and Political Representation". The Unsustainable American State (PDF). pp. 167–196. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.172.7597. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195392135.003.0007. ISBN 978-0-19-539213-5. Archived from the original (PDF) on March 4, 2016. Retrieved October 6, 2020.
- ^ Winship, Scott (Spring 2013). "Overstating the Costs of Inequality" (PDF). National Affairs (15). Archived from the original (PDF) on October 24, 2013. Retrieved April 29, 2015.
- ^ Anne McDonald Culp, ed. (June 25, 2013). Child and Family Advocacy: Bridging the Gaps Between Research, Practice, and Policy. Springer Science & Business Media. pp. 77–. ISBN 978-1-4614-7456-2. OCLC 1026456872.
- ^ Fowler, P. J.; Hovmand, P. S.; Marcal, K. E.; Das, S. (2019). "Solving Homelessness from a Complex Systems Perspective: Insights for Prevention Responses". Annual Review of Public Health. 40: 465–486. doi:10.1146/annurev-publhealth-040617-013553. PMC 6445694. PMID 30601718.
- ^ Mansur, Erin T.; Quigley, John M.; Raphael, Steven; Smolensky, Eugene (2002). "Examining policies to reduce homelessness using a general equilibrium model of the housing market". Journal of Urban Economics. 52 (2): 316–340. doi:10.1016/S0094-1190(02)00011-6.
- ^ "Effectiveness of permanent supportive housing and income assistance interventions for homeless individuals in high-income countries: a systematic review". The Lancet. 5 (6). 2020.
- ^ Evans, William; Philips, David; Ruffini, Krista (2019). Reducing and Preventing Homelessness: A Review of the Evidence and Charting a Research Agenda (Report). National Bureau of Economic Research. doi:10.3386/w26232. S2CID 203531417. Retrieved February 20, 2022.
- ^ "Household Food Security in the United States in 2011" (PDF). USDA. September 2012. Archived from the original (PDF) on October 7, 2012. Retrieved April 8, 2013.
- ^ ""Contempt for the poor in US drives cruel policies," says UN expert". OHCHR. June 4, 2018. Retrieved June 5, 2018.
- ^ "Places: New Hampshire". Forbes. Retrieved June 30, 2020.
- ^ "U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts: New Hampshire". www.census.gov. Retrieved June 30, 2020.
- ^ Sagapolutele, Fili (February 3, 2017). "American Samoa Governor Says Small Economies 'Cannot Afford Any Reduction In Medicaid' | Pacific Islands Report". www.pireport.org. Archived from the original on February 24, 2021. Retrieved June 30, 2020.
- ^ "'A Homeless Pandemic' Looms As 30 Million Are At Risk Of Eviction". NPR. August 10, 2020.
- ^ Gross, Elana Lyn (August 7, 2020). "As Stimulus Talks Stalemate, New Report Finds 40 Million Americans Could Be At Risk Of Evictionx". Forbes. Retrieved January 23, 2021.
- ^ "Supreme Court allows evictions to resume during pandemic". Associated Press. August 27, 2021. Retrieved December 3, 2021.
- ^ "Interstate FAQ (Question #3)". Federal Highway Administration. 2006. Retrieved March 4, 2009.
- ^ "Public Road and Street Mileage in the United States by Type of Surface". United States Department of Transportation. Archived from the original on January 2, 2015. Retrieved January 13, 2015.
- ^ "China overtakes US in car sales". The Guardian. London. January 8, 2010. Retrieved July 10, 2011.
- ^ "Fact #962: Vehicles per Capita: Other Regions/Countries Compared to the United States". Energy.gov. January 30, 2017. Retrieved January 23, 2021.
- ^ "Vehicle Statistics: Cars Per Capita". Capitol Tires.
- ^ Edwards, Chris (July 12, 2020). "Privatization". Downsizing the Federal Government. Cato Institute. Retrieved January 23, 2021.
- ^ "Scheduled Passengers Carried". International Air Transport Association (IATA). 2011. Archived from the original on January 2, 2015. Retrieved February 17, 2012.
- ^ "Preliminary World Airport Traffic and Rankings 2013—High Growth Dubai Moves Up to 7th Busiest Airport". March 31, 2014. Archived from the original on April 1, 2014. Retrieved May 17, 2014.
- ^ "Seasonally Adjusted Transportation Data". Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Transportation Statistics. 2021. Retrieved February 16, 2021.
- ^ US EPA, OAR (February 8, 2017). "Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks". US EPA. Retrieved December 3, 2020.
- ^ Roser, Max; Ritchie, Hannah (May 11, 2017). "CO₂ and other Greenhouse Gas Emissions". Our World in Data.
- ^ a b "Visualizing America's Energy Use, in One Giant Chart". Visual Capitalist. May 6, 2020. Retrieved May 7, 2020.
- ^ "What is the United States' share of world energy consumption?". U.S. Energy Information Administration. November 5, 2021.
- ^ "EIA – Petroleum Basic Data". Eia.doe.gov. Retrieved March 30, 2012.
- ^ "Historical Census Statistics On Population Totals By Race, 1790 to 1990, and By Hispanic Origin, 1970 to 1990, For Large Cities And Other Urban Places In The United States". census.gov. Archived from the original on August 12, 2012. Retrieved May 28, 2013.
- ^ "Census Bureau's 2020 Population Count". United States Census. Retrieved April 26, 2021.
- ^ "Population Clock". www.census.gov.
- ^ "The World Factbook: United States". Central Intelligence Agency. Retrieved November 10, 2018.
- ^ "Frequently Requested Statistics on Immigrants and Immigration in the United States". Migration Policy Institute. March 14, 2019.
- ^ a b c "Ancestry 2000" (PDF). U.S. Census Bureau. June 2004. Archived (PDF) from the original on December 4, 2004. Retrieved December 2, 2016.
- ^ "Table 52. Population by Selected Ancestry Group and Region: 2009" (PDF). U.S. Census Bureau. 2009. Archived from the original (PDF) on December 25, 2012. Retrieved February 11, 2017.
- ^ "Key findings about U.S. immigrants". Pew Research Center. June 17, 2019.
- ^ Jens Manuel Krogstad (October 7, 2019). "Key facts about refugees to the U.S." Pew Research Center.
- ^ "United States—Urban/Rural and Inside/Outside Metropolitan Area". U.S. Census Bureau. Archived from the original on April 3, 2009. Retrieved September 23, 2008.
- ^ "Table 1: Annual Estimates of the Resident Population for Incorporated Places Over 100,000, Ranked by July 1, 2008 Population: April 1, 2000 to July 1, 2008" (PDF). 2008 Population Estimates. U.S. Census Bureau, Population Division. July 1, 2009. Archived from the original (PDF) on December 7, 2009.
- ^ "Counties in South and West Lead Nation in Population Growth". The United States Census Bureau. April 18, 2019. Retrieved August 29, 2020.
- ^ "Table MS-1. Marital Status of the Population 15 Years Old and Over, by Sex, Race and Hispanic Origin: 1950 to Present". Historical Marital Status Tables. U.S. Census Bureau. Retrieved September 11, 2019.
- ^ Hamilton, Brady E.; Martin, Joyce A.; Osterman, Michelle J.K. (May 2021). Births: Provisional data for 2020 (PDF) (Report). Vol. Vital Statistics Rapid Release. Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics. doi:10.15620/cdc:104993.
- ^ "FASTSTATS—Births and Natality". Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. November 21, 2013. Retrieved January 13, 2014.
- ^ "U.S. has world's highest rate of children living in single-parent households". Pew Research Center. Retrieved March 17, 2020.
- ^ "States Where English Is the Official Language". The Washington Post. August 12, 2014. Retrieved September 12, 2020.
- ^ "The Constitution of the State of Hawaii, Article XV, Section 4". Hawaii Legislative Reference Bureau. November 7, 1978. Archived from the original on July 24, 2013. Retrieved June 19, 2007.
- ^ Chapel, Bill (April 21, 2014). "Alaska OKs Bill Making Native Languages Official". NPR.
- ^ "South Dakota recognizes official indigenous language". Argus Leader. Retrieved March 26, 2019.
- ^ "Translation in Puerto Rico". Puerto Rico Channel. Retrieved December 29, 2013.
- ^ Bureau, U.S. Census. "American FactFinder—Results". Archived from the original on February 12, 2020. Retrieved May 29, 2017.
{{cite web}}
:|last=
has generic name (help) - ^ "Foreign Language Enrollments in K–12 Public Schools" (PDF). American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL). February 2011. Archived from the original (PDF) on April 8, 2016. Retrieved October 17, 2015.
- ^ Goldberg, David; Looney, Dennis; Lusin, Natalia (February 2015). "Enrollments in Languages Other Than English in United States Institutions of Higher Education, Fall 2013" (PDF). Modern Language Association. Retrieved May 20, 2015.
- ^ David Skorton & Glenn Altschuler. "America's Foreign Language Deficit". Forbes.
- ^ Importance of religion by state Pew forum
- ^ "U.S. Constitution – First Amendment | Resources | Constitution Annotated | Congress.gov | Library of Congress". Constitution.congress.gov. Retrieved June 22, 2022.
- ^ ANALYSIS (December 19, 2011). "Global Christianity". Pewforum.org. Archived from the original on July 30, 2013. Retrieved August 17, 2012.
- ^ "Church Statistics and Religious Affiliations". Pew Research Center's Religion & Public Life Project. Pew Research. Retrieved September 23, 2014.
- ^ a b ""Nones" on the Rise". Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. 2012. Retrieved January 10, 2014.
- ^ a b "America's Changing Religious Landscape". Pew Research Center: Religion & Public Life. May 12, 2015.
- ^ Barry A. Kosmin; Egon Mayer; Ariela Keysar (December 19, 2001). "American Religious Identification Survey 2001" (PDF). CUNY Graduate Center. Retrieved September 16, 2011.
- ^ "United States". January 27, 2011. Retrieved May 2, 2013.
- ^ Jones, Jeffrey M. (March 29, 2021). "U.S. Church Membership Falls Below Majority for First Time". Gallup.com. Retrieved April 5, 2021.
- ^ Gabbatt, Adam (April 5, 2021). "'Allergic reaction to US religious right' fueling decline of religion, experts say". The Guardian. Retrieved April 5, 2021.
- ^ a b c "America's Changing Religious Landscape". Pew Research Center: Religion & Public Life. May 12, 2015.
- ^ "Mississippians Go to Church the Most; Vermonters, Least". Gallup. February 17, 2010. Retrieved January 13, 2014.
- ^ "Life Expectancy in the United States Declines by a Year and a Half, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics". www.cdc.gov. July 21, 2021. Retrieved October 12, 2021.
- ^ "New International Report on Health Care: U.S. Suicide Rate Highest Among Wealthy Nations | Commonwealth Fund". www.commonwealthfund.org. January 30, 2020. Retrieved March 17, 2020.
- ^ Achenbach, Joel (November 26, 2019). "'There's something terribly wrong': Americans are dying young at alarming rates". The Washington Post. Retrieved December 19, 2019.
- ^ STATCAST – Week of September 9, 2019. NCHS Releases New Monthly Provisional Estimates on Drug Overdose Deaths. National Center for Health Statistics
- ^ "Mortality in the United States, 2017". www.cdc.gov. November 29, 2018. Retrieved December 27, 2018.
- ^ Bernstein, Lenny (November 29, 2018). "U.S. life expectancy declines again, a dismal trend not seen since World War I". The Washington Post. Retrieved December 27, 2018.
- ^ MacAskill, Ewen (August 13, 2007). "US Tumbles Down the World Ratings List for Life Expectancy". The Guardian. London. Retrieved August 15, 2007.
- ^ "How does U.S. life expectancy compare to other countries?". Peterson-Kaiser Health System Tracker. Retrieved March 17, 2020.
- ^ Planas, Roque (July 9, 2013). "Mexico Obesity Rate Surpasses The United States', Making It Fattest Country in the Americas". HuffPost.
- ^ Schlosser, Eric (2002). Fast Food Nation. New York: Perennial. p. 240. ISBN 978-0-06-093845-1.
- ^ "Prevalence of Overweight and Obesity Among Adults: United States, 2003–2004". Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics. Retrieved June 5, 2007.
- ^ Isganaitis, Elvira; Lustig, Robert H. (2005). "Fast Food, Central Nervous System Insulin Resistance, and Obesity". Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology. 25 (12). American Heart Association: 2451–2462. doi:10.1161/01.ATV.0000186208.06964.91. PMID 16166564. Retrieved June 17, 2007.
- ^ Murray, Christopher J.L. (July 10, 2013). "The State of US Health, 1990–2010: Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors". Journal of the American Medical Association. 310 (6): 591–608. doi:10.1001/jama.2013.13805. PMC 5436627. PMID 23842577.
- ^ "About Teen Pregnancy". Center for Disease Control. Retrieved January 24, 2015.
- ^ Oberlander, Jonathan (June 1, 2010). "Long Time Coming: Why Health Reform Finally Passed". Health Affairs. 29 (6): 1112–1116. doi:10.1377/hlthaff.2010.0447. ISSN 0278-2715. PMID 20530339.
- ^ "National Health Interview Survey, January to June 2016" (PDF). CDC.gov. Retrieved November 23, 2016.
- ^ Abby Goodnough; Reed Abelson; Margot Sanger-Katz; Sarah Kliff (March 23, 2020). "Obamacare Turns 10. Here's a Look at What Works and Doesn't". The New York Times. Archived from the original on March 30, 2020. Retrieved March 31, 2020.
- ^ Miller, Sarah; Altekruse, Sean; Johnson, Norman; Wherry, Laura (July 2019). Medicaid and Mortality: New Evidence from Linked Survey and Administrative Data (PDF). NBER Working Paper No. 26081. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research. doi:10.3386/w26081. S2CID 164463149.
- ^ Goldin, Jacob; Lurie, Ithai Z.; McCubbin, Janet (2020). "Health Insurance and Mortality: Experimental Evidence from Taxpayer Outreach". The Quarterly Journal of Economics. 136: 1–49. doi:10.1093/qje/qjaa029.
- ^ "The U.S. Healthcare System: The Best in the World or Just the Most Expensive?" (PDF). University of Maine. 2001. Archived from the original (PDF) on March 9, 2007. Retrieved November 29, 2006.
- ^ Whitman, Glen; Raad, Raymond. "Bending the Productivity Curve: Why America Leads the World in Medical Innovation". The Cato Institute. Retrieved October 9, 2012.
- ^ "Ages for Compulsory School Attendance ..." U.S. Dept. of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. Retrieved June 10, 2007.
- ^ "Statistics About Non-Public Education in the United States". U.S. Dept. of Education, Office of Non-Public Education. Retrieved June 5, 2007.
- ^ Rushe, Dominic (September 7, 2018). "The US spends more on education than other countries. Why is it falling behind?". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved August 29, 2020.
- ^ "Fast Facts: Expenditures". nces.ed.gov. April 2020. Retrieved August 29, 2020.
- ^ Rosenstone, Steven J. (December 17, 2009). "Public Education for the Common Good". University of Minnesota. Archived from the original on August 1, 2014. Retrieved March 6, 2009.
- ^ "Educational Attainment in the United States: 2003" (PDF). U.S. Census Bureau. Retrieved August 1, 2006.
- ^ For more detail on U.S. literacy, see A First Look at the Literacy of America's Adults in the 21st century, U.S. Department of Education (2003).
- ^ "Human Development Indicators" (PDF). United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Reports. 2005. Archived from the original (PDF) on June 20, 2007. Retrieved January 14, 2008.
- ^ "QS World University Rankings". Topuniversities. Archived from the original on July 17, 2011. Retrieved July 10, 2011.
- ^ "Top 200—The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2010–2011". Times Higher Education. Retrieved July 10, 2011.
- ^ "Academic Ranking of World Universities 2014". Shanghai Ranking Consultancy. Archived from the original on January 19, 2015. Retrieved May 29, 2015.
- ^ "U21 Ranking of National Higher Education Systems 2019 | Universitas 21". Universitas 21. Retrieved April 2, 2019.
- ^ "U.S. education spending tops global list, study shows". CBS. AP. June 25, 2013. Retrieved October 5, 2013.
- ^ "Education at a Glance 2013" (PDF). OECD. Retrieved October 5, 2013.
- ^ [2] Accessed January 8, 2022.
- ^ Hess, Abigail Johnson (December 22, 2020). "U.S. student debt has increased by more than 100% over the past 10 years". CNBC. Retrieved January 8, 2022.
- ^ "Student Loan Debt Exceeds One Trillion Dollars". NPR. April 4, 2012. Retrieved September 8, 2013.
- ^ Krupnick, Matt (October 4, 2018). "Student loan crisis threatens a generation's American dream". The Guardian. Retrieved October 4, 2018.
- ^ Fallert, Nicole (December 22, 2021). "Biden Has Extended A Pause On Student Loan Payments Due To The Latest COVID Surge". BuzzFeed News. Retrieved January 8, 2022.
- ^ "Statue of Liberty". World Heritage. UNESCO. Retrieved January 4, 2022.
- ^ a b c Adams, J.Q.; Strother-Adams, Pearlie (2001). Dealing with diversity : the anthology. Chicago: Kendall/Hunt Pub. ISBN 978-0-7872-8145-8.
- ^ Thompson, William E.; Hickey, Joseph V. (2004). Society in focus : an introduction to sociology (5th ed.). Boston: Pearson/Allyn and Bacon. ISBN 978-0-205-41365-2.
- ^ Fiorina, Morris P.; Peterson, Paul E. (2010). The New American democracy (7th ed.). London: Longman. p. 97. ISBN 978-0-205-78016-7.
- ^ Holloway, Joseph E. (2005). Africanisms in American culture (2nd ed.). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. pp. 18–38. ISBN 978-0-253-21749-3.
Johnson, Fern L. (2000). Speaking culturally : language diversity in the United States. Sage Publications. p. 116. ISBN 978-0-8039-5912-5. - ^ Koch, Richard (July 10, 2013). "Is Individualism Good or Bad?". HuffPost.
- ^ Huntington, Samuel P. (2004). "Chapters 2–4". Who are We?: The Challenges to America's National Identity. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0-684-87053-3. Retrieved October 25, 2015.: also see American's Creed, written by William Tyler Page and adopted by Congress in 1918.
- ^ AP (June 25, 2007). "Americans give record $295B to charity". USA Today. Retrieved October 4, 2013.
- ^ "International comparisons of charitable giving" (PDF). Charities Aid Foundation. November 2006. Archived from the original (PDF) on December 24, 2014. Retrieved October 4, 2013.
- ^ babtunde, Saka. "10 Days That Changed History—NAIJA NEWS TODAY & LATEST BREAKING NEWS ™". www.newsliveng.com. Archived from the original on October 9, 2020. Retrieved May 24, 2019.
- ^ Clifton, Jon (March 21, 2013). "More Than 100 Million Worldwide Dream of a Life in the U.S. More than 25% in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Dominican Republic want to move to the U.S." Gallup. Retrieved January 10, 2014.
- ^ "Understanding Mobility in America". Center for American Progress. April 26, 2006.
- ^ Schneider, Donald (July 29, 2013). "A Guide to Understanding International Comparisons of Economic Mobility". The Heritage Foundation. Retrieved August 22, 2013.
- ^ Gutfeld, Amon (2002). American Exceptionalism: The Effects of Plenty on the American Experience. Brighton and Portland: Sussex Academic Press. p. 65. ISBN 978-1-903900-08-6.
- ^ Zweig, Michael (2004). What's Class Got To Do With It, American Society in the Twenty-First Century. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. ISBN 978-0-8014-8899-3. "Effects of Social Class and Interactive Setting on Maternal Speech". Education Resource Information Center. Retrieved January 27, 2007.
- ^ O'Keefe, Kevin (2005). The Average American. New York: PublicAffairs. ISBN 978-1-58648-270-1.
- ^ Harold, Bloom (1999). Emily Dickinson. Broomall, PA: Chelsea House Publishers. p. 9. ISBN 978-0-7910-5106-1.
- ^ Buell, Lawrence (Spring–Summer 2008). "The Unkillable Dream of the Great American Novel: Moby-Dick as Test Case". American Literary History. 20 (1–2): 132–155. doi:10.1093/alh/ajn005. ISSN 0896-7148. S2CID 170250346.
- ^ Edward, Quinn (2006). A dictionary of literary and thematic terms (2nd ed.). Facts On File. p. 361. ISBN 978-0-8160-6243-0.David, Seed (2009). A companion to twentieth-century United States fiction. Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell. p. 76. ISBN 978-1-4051-4691-3.Jeffrey, Meyers (1999). Hemingway : A biography. New York: Da Capo Press. p. 139. ISBN 978-0-306-80890-6.
- ^ Lesher, Linda Parent (2000). The Best Novels of the Nineties: A Reader's Guide. McFarland. p. 109. ISBN 978-1-4766-0389-6.
- ^ Brown, Milton W. (1963). The Story of the Armory Show (2nd ed.). New York: Abbeville Press. ISBN 978-0-89659-795-2.
- ^ Janson, Horst Woldemar; Janson, Anthony F. (2003). History of Art: The Western Tradition. Prentice Hall Professional. p. 955. ISBN 978-0-13-182895-7.
- ^ Davenport, Alma (1991). The History of Photography: An Overview. UNM Press. p. 67. ISBN 978-0-8263-2076-6.
- ^ Angus K. Gillespie; Jay Mechling (1995). American Wildlife in Symbol and Story. Univ. of Tennessee Press. pp. 31–. ISBN 978-1-57233-259-1.
- ^ "Wheat Info". Wheatworld.org. Archived from the original on October 11, 2009. Retrieved January 15, 2015.
- ^ "Traditional Indigenous Recipes". American Indian Health and Diet Project. Retrieved September 15, 2014.
- ^ Akenuwa, Ambrose (July 1, 2015). Is the United States Still the Land of the Free and Home to the Brave?. Lulu Press. pp. 92–94. ISBN 978-1-329-26112-9. Retrieved November 20, 2020.
- ^ Sidney Wilfred Mintz (1996). Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom: Excursions Into Eating, Culture, and the Past. Beacon Press. pp. 134–. ISBN 978-0-8070-4629-6. Retrieved October 25, 2015.
- ^ Breadsley, Eleanor (January 24, 2012). "Why McDonald's in France Doesn't Feel Like Fast Food". NPR. Retrieved January 15, 2015.
- ^ "When Was the First Drive-Thru Restaurant Created?". Wisegeek.org. Retrieved January 15, 2015.
- ^ Cawthon, Haley (December 31, 2020). "KFC is America's favorite fried chicken, data suggests". BizJournals.com. Retrieved May 8, 2021.
- ^ Russell, Joan (May 23, 2016). "How Pizza Became America's Favorite Food". PasteMagazine.com. Retrieved May 8, 2021.
- ^ Klapthor, James N. (August 23, 2003). "What, When, and Where Americans Eat in 2003". Newswise/Institute of Food Technologists. Retrieved June 19, 2007.
- ^ H, D. "The coffee insurgency". The Economist. Retrieved January 15, 2015.
- ^ Smith, 2004, pp. 131–132
- ^ Levenstein, 2003, pp. 154–155
- ^ Eggart, Elise (2007). Let's Go USA 24th Edition. St. Martin's Press. p. 68. ISBN 978-0-312-37445-7.
- ^ Bierley, Paul E. (1973). John Philip Sousa: American Phenomenon (Revised ed.). Alfred Music. p. 5. ISBN 978-1-4574-4995-6.
- ^ a b Biddle, Julian (2001). What Was Hot!: Five Decades of Pop Culture in America. New York: Citadel. p. ix. ISBN 978-0-8065-2311-8.
- ^ Hartman, Graham (January 5, 2012). "Metallica's 'Black album' is Top-Selling Disc of last 20 years". Loudwire. Retrieved October 12, 2015.
- ^ Vorel, Jim (September 27, 2012). "Eagles tribute band landing at Kirkland". Herald & Review. Retrieved October 12, 2015.
- ^ "Aerosmith will rock Salinas with July concert". February 2, 2015. Retrieved October 12, 2015.
- ^ "10 ways that Frank Sinatra changed the world". USA Today. December 8, 2015. Retrieved June 24, 2021.
- ^ "How Prince and his music challenged the music industry". Global News. Retrieved June 25, 2016.
- ^ "Whitney Houston's Global Impact". CNN. February 13, 2012. Retrieved June 24, 2021.
- ^ * "Taylor Swift: Teen idol to 'biggest pop artist in the world'". The Tennessean. September 24, 2015.
- Lynch, Gerald (December 21, 2009). "Britney Spears is the most searched for celebrity of the decade". Tech Digest. Retrieved October 12, 2015.
- "Katy Perry: now the world's richest (famous) woman". The Guardian. June 30, 2015. Retrieved October 25, 2015.
- Rosen, Jody. "Beyoncé: The Woman on Top of the World". The New York Times.
- "The Lady Gaga professor who became a global star". Hindustan Times. May 30, 2013. Retrieved June 25, 2021.
- ^ "How Ariana Grande became the biggest star on the planet". Evening Standard. December 5, 2018. Retrieved June 25, 2021.
- ^ "Nigeria surpasses Hollywood as world's second-largest film producer" (Press release). United Nations. May 5, 2009. Retrieved February 17, 2013.
- ^ Billboard. Nielsen Business Media. April 29, 1944. p. 68. ISSN 0006-2510.
- ^ "John Landis Rails Against Studios: 'They're Not in the Movie Business Anymore'". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved January 24, 2015.
- ^ Krasniewicz, Louise; Disney, Walt (2010). Walt Disney: A Biography. ABC-CLIO. p. 10. ISBN 978-0-313-35830-2.
- ^ Matthews, Charles (June 3, 2011). "Book explores Hollywood 'Golden Age' of the 1960s-'70s". The Washington Post. Retrieved August 6, 2015.
- ^ Banner, Lois (August 5, 2012). "Marilyn Monroe, the eternal shape shifter". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved August 6, 2015.
- ^ Rick, Jewell (August 8, 2008). "John Wayne, an American Icon". University of Southern California. Archived from the original on August 22, 2008. Retrieved August 6, 2015.
- ^ Greven, David (2013). Psycho-Sexual: Male Desire in Hitchcock, De Palma, Scorsese, and Friedkin. University of Texas Press. p. 23. ISBN 978-0-292-74204-8.
- ^ Morrison, James (1998). Passport to Hollywood: Hollywood Films, European Directors. SUNY Press. p. 11. ISBN 978-0-7914-3938-8.
- ^ Village Voice: 100 Best Films of the 20th century (2001) Archived March 31, 2014, at the Wayback Machine. Filmsite.
- ^ "Sight & Sound Top Ten Poll 2002". British Film Institute. 2002. Archived from the original on November 5, 2002.
- ^ "AFI's 100 Years". American Film Institute. Archived from the original on April 7, 2014. Retrieved January 24, 2015.
- ^ Drowne, Kathleen Morgan; Huber, Patrick (2004). The 1920s. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 236. ISBN 978-0-313-32013-2.
- ^ Kroon, Richard W. (2014). A/V A to Z: An Encyclopedic Dictionary of Media, Entertainment and Other Audiovisual Terms. McFarland. p. 338. ISBN 978-0-7864-5740-3.
- ^ Theresa Saxon (October 11, 2011). American Theatre: History, Context, Form. Edinburgh University Press. pp. 7–. ISBN 978-0-7486-3127-8. OCLC 1162047055.
- ^ Felicia Hardison Londré; Daniel J. Watermeier (1998). The History of North American Theater: From Pre-Columbian Times to the Present. Continuum. ISBN 978-0-8264-1079-5. OCLC 1024855967.
- ^ Stephen Watt, and Gary A. Richardson, American Drama: Colonial to Contemporary (1994).
- ^ "Top 10 Most Popular Sports in America 2017". SportsInd. October 28, 2016. Archived from the original on June 6, 2017. Retrieved June 8, 2017.
- ^ Krane, David K. (October 30, 2002). "Professional Football Widens Its Lead Over Baseball as Nation's Favorite Sport". Harris Interactive. Archived from the original on July 9, 2010. Retrieved September 14, 2007. MacCambridge, Michael (2004). America's Game: The Epic Story of How Pro Football Captured a Nation. New York: Random House. ISBN 978-0-375-50454-9.
- ^ Guliza, Anthony (August 14, 2019). "How the NFL took over America in 100 years". ESPN. Retrieved May 8, 2021.
- ^ "New college football playoff draws larger TV audience for title game". Chicago Tribune. Associated Press.
- ^ "History of the NBA". NBA.com. National Basketball Association. Retrieved May 4, 2021.
- ^ "Passion for College Football Remains Robust". National Football Foundation. March 19, 2013. Archived from the original on April 7, 2014. Retrieved April 1, 2014.
- ^ Carlisle, Jeff (April 6, 2020). "MLS Year One, 25 seasons ago: The Wild West of training, travel, hockey shootouts and American soccer". ESPN. Retrieved May 5, 2021.
- ^ "Global sports market to hit $141 billion in 2012". Reuters. June 18, 2008. Retrieved July 24, 2013.
- ^ Schaus, Gerald P.; Wenn, Stephen R. (February 9, 2007). Onward to the Olympics: Historical Perspectives on the Olympic Games. Wilfrid Laurier University Press. p. 224. ISBN 978-0-889-20505-5.
- ^ Chase, Chris (February 7, 2014). "The 10 most fascinating facts about the all-time Winter Olympics medal standings". USA Today. Retrieved February 28, 2014. Loumena, Dan (February 6, 2014). "With Sochi Olympics approaching, a history of Winter Olympic medals". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved February 28, 2014.
- ^ Sarah Krasnoff, Lindsay (December 26, 2017). "How the NBA went global". The Washington Post. Retrieved January 24, 2021.
- ^ Liss, Howard. Lacrosse (Funk & Wagnalls, 1970) pg 13.
- ^ "As American as Mom, Apple Pie and Football? Football continues to trump baseball as America's Favorite Sport" (PDF). Harris Interactive. January 16, 2014. Archived from the original (PDF) on March 9, 2014. Retrieved July 2, 2014.
- ^ Cowen, Tyler; Grier, Kevin (February 9, 2012). "What Would the End of Football Look Like?". Grantland/ESPN. Retrieved February 12, 2012.
- ^ "Streaming TV Services: What They Cost, What You Get". The New York Times. Associated Press. October 12, 2015. Archived from the original on October 15, 2015. Retrieved October 12, 2015.
- ^ "TV Fans Spill into Web Sites". eMarketer. June 7, 2007. Retrieved June 10, 2007.
- ^ "History: NPR". NPR. June 20, 2013. Retrieved May 5, 2021.
- ^ Waits, Jennifer (October 17, 2014). "Number of U.S. Radio Stations on the Rise, Especially LPFM, according to New FCC Count". Radio Survivor. Retrieved January 6, 2015.
- ^ Brenda Shaffer (2006). The Limits of Culture: Islam and Foreign Policy. MIT Press. p. 116. ISBN 978-0-262-19529-4.
- ^ "Our Story". Associated Press. Retrieved May 5, 2021.
- ^ "Top Sites in United States". Alexa. 2021. Retrieved October 6, 2021.
- ^ "Spanish Newspapers in United States". W3newspapers. Retrieved August 5, 2014.
- ^ "Spanish Language Newspapers in the USA : Hispanic Newspapers : Periódiscos en Español en los EE.UU". Onlinenewspapers.com. Archived from the original on June 26, 2014. Retrieved August 5, 2014.
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.
- 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.
- Cowper, Marcus (2011). National Geographic History Book: An Interactive Journey. National Geographic Society. ISBN 978-1-4262-0679-5.
- 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.
- Fagan, Brian M. (2016). Ancient Lives: An Introduction to Archaeology and Prehistory. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-35027-9.
- 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. S2CID 162243347.
- 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.
- 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.
- Gelo, Daniel J. (2018). Indians of the Great Plains. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1-351-71812-7.
- García, Ofelia (2011). Bilingual Education in the 21st Century: A Global Perspective. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-1-4443-5978-7.
- 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.
- 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.
- Hoopes, Townsend; Brinkley, Douglas (1997). FDR and the Creation of the U.N. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-08553-2.
- Ingersoll, Thomas N. (2016). The Loyalist Problem in Revolutionary New England. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-107-12861-3.
- Inghilleri, Moira (2016). Translation and Migration. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1-315-39980-5.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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 978-1-59486-744-6.
- 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.
- 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.
- Martinez, Donna; Sage, Grace; Ono, Azusa (2016). Urban American Indians: Reclaiming Native Space: Reclaiming Native Space. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-1-4408-3208-6.
- Martone, Eric (2016). Italian Americans: The History and Culture of a People. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-1-61069-995-2.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Mostert, Mary (2005). The Threat of Anarchy Leads to the Constitution of the United States. CTR Publishing, Inc. ISBN 978-0-9753851-4-2.
- 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.
- Perdue, Theda; Green, Michael D (2005). The Columbia Guide to American Indians of the Southeast. Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-50602-1.
- 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.
- 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.
- Ranlet, Philip (1999). Vaughan, Alden T. (ed.). New England Encounters: Indians and Euroamericans Ca. 1600–1850. North Eastern University Press.
- 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.
- 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.
- Russell, John Henderson (1913). The Free Negro in Virginia, 1619–1865. Johns Hopkins University. p. 196.
- Safire, William (2003). No Uncertain Terms: More Writing from the Popular "On Language" Column in The New York Times Magazine. Simon and Schuster. p. 199. ISBN 978-0-7432-4955-3.
- 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.
- Savage, Candace (2011). Prairie: A Natural History. Greystone Books. ISBN 978-1-55365-899-3.
- 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.
- 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.
- Thornton, Russell (1998). Studying Native America: Problems and Prospects. Univ of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 978-0-299-16064-7.
- Vaughan, Alden T. (1999). New England Encounters: Indians and Euroamericans Ca. 1600–1850. North Eastern University Press.
- Volo, James M.; Volo, Dorothy Denneen (2007). Family Life in Native America. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-0-313-33795-6.
- 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.
- Weiss, Edith Brown; Jacobson, Harold Karan (2000). Engaging Countries: Strengthening Compliance with International Environmental Accords. MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-73132-4.
- 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.
- Winchester, Simon (2013). The men who United the States. Harper Collins. pp. 198, 216, 251, 253. ISBN 978-0-06-207960-2.
- Zinn, Howard (2005). A People's History of the United States. Harper Perennial Modern Classics. ISBN 978-0-06-083865-2.
Internet sources
- "Country Profile: United States of America". BBC News. London. April 22, 2008. Retrieved May 18, 2008.
- Cohen, Eliot A. (July–August 2004). "History and the Hyperpower". Foreign Affairs. Washington, DC. Retrieved July 14, 2006.
- "Slavery and the Slave Trade in Rhode Island".
- "History of "In God We Trust"". U.S. Department of the Treasury. March 8, 2011. Retrieved February 23, 2013.
- "Early History, Native Americans, and Early Settlers in Mercer County". Mercer County Historical Society. 2005. Archived from the original on March 10, 2005. Retrieved April 6, 2016.
- Hayes, Nick (November 6, 2009). "Looking back 20 years: Who deserves credit for ending the Cold War?". MinnPost. Retrieved March 11, 2013.
- "59e. The End of the Cold War". USHistory.org. Independence Hall Association. Retrieved 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". QuickFacts. U.S. Census Bureau. 2016. Retrieved 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.
External links
- United States. The World Factbook. Central Intelligence Agency.
- 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
- 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
- Wikimedia Atlas of the United States
- Geographic data related to United States at OpenStreetMap
- Measure of America A variety of mapped information relating to health, education, income, and demographics for the U.S.
- Photos
- United States
- 1776 establishments in the United States
- Countries in North America
- English-speaking countries and territories
- Federal constitutional republics
- Former British colonies and protectorates in the Americas
- Former confederations
- G7 nations
- G20 nations
- Member states of NATO
- Member states of the United Nations
- States and territories established in 1776
- Superpowers
- Transcontinental countries