The United States of America

The United States of America 

   The USA is a federal republic of 50 states. Besides the 48 contiguous states that occupy the middle latitudes of the continent, the United States includes the state of Alaska at the north-western extreme of North America and the island state of Hawaii in the mid-Pacific Ocean.
   The conterminous states are bounded on the north by Canada, on the east by the Atlantic Ocean, on the south by the Gulf of Mexico and Mexico and on the west by the Pacific Ocean. The national capital is Washington, which is coextensive with the District of Columbia, the federal capital region created in 1790.
   The total area of the United States is 3,679,192 square miles (9,529,063 square kilometres), making it the fourth largest country in the world in area (after Russia, Canada and China). Outlying territories and other politically associated areas in the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea add approximately 4,000 square miles to this figure.
   The major characteristic of the United States is probably its great variety. Its physical environment ranges from the Arctic to the subtropical, from the moist rain forest to the arid desert, from the rugged mountain peak to the flat prairie. Although the total population of the United States is large by world standards, its overall population density is relatively low; the country embraces some of the worlds largest urban concentrations as well as some of the most extensive areas that are almost devoid of habitation.
   The United States contains a highly diverse population; but, unlike a country such as China that largely incorporated indigenous peoples, its diversity has to a great degree come from an immense and sustained global immigration. Probably no other country has a wider range of racial, ethnic and cultural types than does the United States.
   In addition to the presence of surviving native Americans (including American Indians, Aleuts and Eskimo) and the descendants of Africans taken as slaves to America, the national character has been enriched and tested, by the tens of millions of immigrants who by and large have gone to America hoping for greater social, political and economic opportunities than they had in the places they left.