United States

The United States crosses North America between two oceans, with Alaska reaching into the Arctic and Hawaii far out in the Pacific. Two mountain systems frame it: the old, worn-down Appalachians in the east and the higher Rockies in the west. Between them lie the lowlands of the Mississippi and the Missouri and the wheat country of the Great Plains. West of the Rockies come high deserts, the Sierra Nevada and the Cascades. Tornadoes sweep the plains, hurricanes strike the Gulf coast, and earthquakes shake California.

Native American nations, from the Pueblo towns of the south-west to the Haudenosaunee confederacy of the north-east, had lived across the continent for millennia before Europeans arrived. Thirteen British colonies on the Atlantic coast declared independence in 1776, and the Constitution took effect in 1789. Purchase, treaty and war carried the country west to the Pacific, displacing Native peoples. The Civil War of 1861–65 ended slavery, and the twentieth century, with its world wars and the Cold War, made the United States a global power.

Its people descend from Native Americans, enslaved Africans and immigrants from every part of the world, each wave changing the country’s food, faith and speech. Jazz, blues, country, rock and roll and hip hop all began here, and Hollywood films and Silicon Valley software reach almost every country. The economy spans the farms of the Midwest, oil and gas from Texas, aircraft, pharmaceuticals, Wall Street finance and universities that draw students from across the globe.