United

United States
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
United States of America

Flag
Motto:
"In God we trust" (official)[1][2][3]
"E pluribus unum" (Latin) (traditional)
"Out of many, one"
Anthem: "The Star-Spangled Banner"

MENU
0:00
Projection of North America with the United States in green
Capital Washington, D.C.
38°53′N 77°01′W
Largest city New York City
Official languages None at federal level[a]
National language English[b]
Demonym American
Government Federal presidential constitutional republic
 - President Barack Obama (D)
 - Vice President Joe Biden (D)
 - Speaker of the House John Boehner (R)
 - Chief Justice John Roberts
Legislature Congress
 - Upper house Senate
 - Lower house House of Representatives
Independence from Great Britain
 - Declared July 4, 1776
 - Recognized September 3, 1783
 - Constitution June 21, 1788
Area
 - Total 9,826,675 km2[4][c] (4th)
3,794,101 sq mi
 - Water (%) 6.76
Population
 - 2013 estimate 316,663,000[5] (3rd)
 - Density 34.2/km2 (179th)
88.6/sq mi
GDP (PPP) 2012 estimate
 - Total $15.685 trillion[6] (1st)
 - Per capita $49,922[6] (6th)
GDP (nominal) 2012 estimate
 - Total $15.685 trillion[6] (1st)
 - Per capita $49,922[6] (12th)
Gini (2011) 47.7[7]
high · 39th (2009)
HDI (2013) Increase 0.937[8]
very high · 3rd
Currency United States dollar ($) (USD)
Time zone (UTC−5 to −10)
 - Summer (DST) (UTC−4 to −10[e])
Drives on the right[g]
Calling code +1
ISO 3166 code US
Internet TLD .us   .gov   .mil   .edu
a. ^ English is the official language of at least 28 states; some sources give higher figures, based on differing definitions of "official".[9] English and Hawaiian are both official languages in the state of Hawaii.
b. ^ English is the de facto language of American government and the sole language spoken at home by 80 percent of Americans aged five and older. Spanish is the second most commonly spoken language.
c. ^ Whether the United States or China is larger has been disputed. The figure given is from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's The World Factbook. Other sources give smaller figures. All authoritative calculations of the country's size include only the 50 states and the District of Columbia, not the territories.
d. ^ The population estimate is of people whose usual residence is within the 50 states and the District of Columbia, regardless of nationality. It does not include those living in the territories (over 4 million people, mostly in Puerto Rico).
e. ^ See Time in the United States for details about laws governing time zones in the United States.
f. ^ Does not include insular areas and United States Minor Outlying Islands, which have their own ISO 3166 codes.
g. ^ Except U.S. Virgin Islands.
The United States of America (USA or U.S.A.), commonly referred to as the United States (US or U.S.), America, or simply the States, is a federal republic[10][11] consisting of 50 states and a federal district. The 48 contiguous states and the federal district of Washington, D.C. are in central North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is the northwestern part of North America, west of Canada and east of Russia which is across the Bering Strait in Asia, and the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-North Pacific. The country also has five populated and nine unpopulated territories in the Pacific and the Caribbean. The US exercises full international defense authority and responsibility for three states through Compact of Free Association with Micronesia, the Republic of the Marshall Islands and the Republic of Palau.
At 3.79 million square miles (9.83 million km2) in total and with around 315 million people, the United States is the fourth-largest in total area, the fifth largest in the contiguous area and third in population. It is one of the world's most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many countries.[12] The geography and climate of the U.S. is also extremely diverse, with deserts, plains, forests, and mountains that are home to a wide variety of wildlife.
Paleo-indians migrated from Asia to what is now the United States mainland around 12,000 years ago. European colonization began around 1600, mostly from England. The United States emerged from 13 British colonies located along the Atlantic seaboard. Disputes between Great Britain and the American colonies led to the American Revolution. On July 4, 1776, delegates from the 13 colonies unanimously issued the Declaration of Independence, which established the United States of America. The American Revolutionary War, which ended with the recognition of independence of the United States from the Kingdom of Great Britain, was the first successful war of independence against a European colonial empire.[13][14] The current Constitution was adopted on September 17, 1787; 27 Amendments have since been added to the Constitution. The first 10 amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and guarantee many fundamental civil rights and freedoms.
Driven by the doctrine of manifest destiny, the United States embarked on a vigorous expansion across North America throughout the 19th century.[15] This involved displacing native tribes, acquiring new territories, and gradually admitting new states.[15] The American Civil War ended legalized slavery in the United States.[16] By the end of the 19th century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean,[17] and its economy was the world's largest.[18] The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the country's status as a global military power. The United States emerged from World War II as a global superpower, the first country with nuclear weapons, and a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union left the United States as the sole superpower.
The United States is a developed country and has the world's largest national economy, with an estimated 2013 GDP of $16.2 trillion –22% of global GDP at purchasing-power parity, as of 2011.[6][19][20] The per capita GDP of the U.S. was the world's sixth-highest as of 2010.[6] The US has the fourth most unequal income distribution among OECD nations, behind Chile, Mexico and Turkey.[21] The economy is fueled by an abundance of natural resources, a well-developed infrastructure,[22] and high productivity;[23] and while its economy is considered post-industrial it continues to be one of the world's largest manufacturers.[24] The country accounts for 39% of global military spending,[25] being the foremost economic and military power, a prominent political and cultural force in the world, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovation.[26][27]
Contents  [hide]
1 Etymology
2 History
2.1 Native American and European contact
2.2 Settlements
2.3 Independence and expansion
2.4 Civil War and Reconstruction Era
2.5 Industrialization
2.6 World War I, Great Depression, and World War II
2.7 Cold War and Civil Rights era
2.8 Contemporary era
3 Geography, climate, and environment
3.1 Environmental issues
4 Demographics
4.1 Population
4.2 Language
4.3 Religion
4.4 Family structure
5 Government and politics
5.1 Political divisions
5.2 Parties and elections
5.3 Foreign relations
5.4 Government finance
5.4.1 Public debt
6 Military
7 Law enforcement
8 Economy
8.1 Income, poverty, and wealth
9 Infrastructure
9.1 Transportation
9.2 Energy
10 Science and technology
11 Education
12 Health
13 Culture
13.1 Popular media
13.2 Literature, philosophy, and the arts
13.3 Food
13.4 Sports
14 See also
15 References
16 Bibliography
16.1 Website sources
17 External links
Etymology

See also: Names for United States citizens
In 1507, German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a world map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere "America" after Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci.[28]
The first documentary evidence of the phrase "United States of America" is from a letter dated January 2, 1776, written by Stephen Moylan, Esq., George Washingon's aide-de-camp and Muster-Master General of the Continental Army. Addressed to Lt. Col. Joseph Reed, Moylan expressed his wish to carry the "full and ample powers of the United States of America" to Spain to assist in the revolutionary war effort.[29]
The first publicly published evidence of the phrase "United States of America" was in an anonymously written essay in The Virginia Gazette newspaper in Williamsburg, Virginia on April 6, 1776.[30][31] In June 1776, Thomas Jefferson included the phrase "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA" in all capitalized letters in the headline of his "original Rough draught" of the Declaration of Independence.[32][33] In the final Fourth of July version of the Declaration, the pertinent section of the title was changed to read, "The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America".[34]
In 1777 the Articles of Confederation announced, "The Stile of this Confederacy shall be 'The United States of America'".[35]
The short form "United States" is also standard. Other common forms include the "U.S.", the "USA", and "America". Colloquial names include the "U.S. of A." and, internationally, the "States". "Columbia", a name popular in poetry and songs of the late 1700s,[36] derives its origin from Christopher Columbus; it appears in the name "District of Columbia".
The standard way to refer to a citizen of the United States is as an "American". "United States", "American" and "U.S." are used to refer to the country adjectivally ("American values", "U.S. forces"). "American" is rarely used in English to refer to subjects not connected with the United States.[37]
The phrase "United States" was originally treated as plural, a description of a collection of independent states—e.g., "the United States are"—including in the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1865. It became common to treat it as singular, a single unit—e.g., "the United States is"—after the end of the Civil War. The singular form is now standard; the plural form is retained in the idiom "these United States".[38] The difference has been described as more significant than one of usage, but reflecting the difference between a collection of states and a unit.[39]
In non-English languages, the name is frequently translated as the translation of either the "United States" or "United States of America", and colloquially as "America". In addition, an initialism is sometimes used.[40]
History

Main articles: History of the United States and Timeline of United States history


1766 engraving of a meeting between Native Americans and Europeans
Native American and European contact
People from Asia migrated to the North American continent approximately 12,000 or more years ago.[41] Some, such as the pre-Columbian Mississippian culture, developed advanced agriculture, grand architecture, and state-level societies. After European explorers and traders made the first contacts, it is estimated that their population declined due to various reasons, including diseases such as smallpox and measles to which indigenous Americans had no natural immunities,[42][43] intermarriage,[44] and violence.[45][46][47]
In the early days of colonization many settlers were subject to shortages of food, disease and attacks from native Indians. Indians were also often at war with neighboring tribes and would often enslave their defeated enemy, a practice that was also soon used by various colonists who captured Indians in battle. During the various colonial wars, many colonists were also captured by Indians as slaves and taken north to Canada and sold to the French.[48]
At the same time however many natives and settlers got along and came to depend on each other, especially settlers during the winter months. Natives also came to depend on settlers for guns, ammunition, powder and other modern devices. Because many tribes were frequently at war with one another it became imperative to establish and secure good relationships with at least one group of colonists. As colonists began to spread out into the interior their contact with native Indians increased, sometimes resulting in good relations, oftentimes resulting in conflict. In the process "Native American influenced colonist, and colonist influenced Native American".[49]
Natives taught many settlers where, when and how to hunt and fish in the vast frontier that lay before them whose elements were generally unknown to the Europeans. In order to survive settlers often depended on native Indians who taught them how to adopt to the Indian's "hunting culture" and learned the use of animal skins as camouflage, decoys along with various whistles and calls used to attract prey. European ministries and others felt it was important to "civilize" the Indians and urged them to concentrate on farming and ranching and not depend primarily on hunting and gathering. At the same time Indians offered the benefit of their experience in growing corn, an unknown crop in Europe, and in the use of dead fish and other methods as fertilizer. It was not long before many Indians began to grow new crops and raise livestock and poultry in their communities and made use of the various living utilities settlers had to offer.[50][51]
Initially the Puritan and Wampanoag were peaceful, however the King Philip's War began following cultural and religious differences between the colonists and the Wampanoag;[52][53] by the war's end, the European colonists had defeated the Native Americans and were able to expand and control New England.[54] In Carolina, Native Americans were captured and sold into slavery to both New England and the West Indies. In 1676, the Virginia colony legally sanctioned the enslavement of Native Americans.[55] Conversely, the Five Civilized Tribes were involved in the institution of African slavery as planters.[56]
Settlements


The signing of the Mayflower Compact, 1620.
Further information: European colonization of the Americas and 13 colonies
After Columbus' discovery of the New World in 1492 other explorers followed.[57] The first Spanish explorers landed in "La Florida" in 1513. Conquistadors explored much of the continent’s interior and Spain later set up some settlements in parts of Florida and the American southwest that were eventually merged into the United States.[58] There were also some French attempts to colonize the east coast, and later more successful settlements along the Mississippi River. Many early European colonies failed due to starvation, disease, harsh weather, Indian attacks, or warfare with European rivals. The fate of the "lost" English colony of Roanoke in the 1580s is an enduring mystery.
James I on April 10, 1606 chartered The Virginia Company with the purpose of establishing English settlements on the eastern coast of North America. The Virginia Colony was planted in 1607 with Jamestown and the Pilgrims' Plymouth Colony in 1620. Both colonies suffered initial hardships and great loss of life, but eventually stabilized and became the first successful English settlements in America. Both also saw efficiency greatly improve when personal property replaced the early communal operations.[59] The continent’s first elected legislative assembly, Virginia's House of Burgesses created in 1619, and the Mayflower Compact, signed by the Pilgrims before disembarking, established precedents for the pattern of representative self-government and constitutionalism that would develop throughout the American colonies.[60][61] Tens of thousands of Puritans later settled New England.
Other New England colonies were established. Much of the territory between them and Virginia was controlled by the Dutch until England seized it in the late 17th century during the Anglo-Dutch Wars, leading to the creation of the Middle Colonies.[62] Trade with and Christian evangelism to local Indians were established in the colonies' early days, though relations would alternate from friendly to tense, and were characterized by periodic bouts of warfare, often with some tribes allying themselves with the English against common foes. Incidents like the massacre of 1622, the Pequot War, and King Philip's War caused great destruction and threatened the existence of entire colonies, but resulted in reprisals that ultimately saw the power of enemy tribes reduced or broken, facilitating the expansion of English settlements.[63][64]
Most settlers in every colony were small farmers, but other industries developed. Tobacco was popular in Europe and became a major early cash crop. Furs, fishing, lumber, rum, rice, indigo, construction, wheat, ranching, and eventually shipbuilding contributed to economic growth. By the late colonial period Americans were producing one-seventh of the world's iron supply.[65] Cities eventually dotted the coast to support local economies and serve as trade hubs. English colonists were supplemented by waves of Scotch-Irish and other groups. As coastal land grew more expensive people pushed west into the hills and backwoods, seeking to carve an existence out of virgin wilderness.[66]


Penn's Treaty between the Quaker settlers and Native Americans was never violated during William Penn's lifetime.
Settlers were a diverse mix of adventurers, profit seekers, people wanting religious freedom, and those who simply saw an opportunity for a better life.[67] Many came as indentured servants, either convicts or people who otherwise couldn't afford passage voluntarily signing contracts, and were set free after completing their specified term of service. Two-thirds of all Virginia settlers between 1630 and 1680 arrived indentured.[68]
The first African slaves were brought to the Americas by Spanish conquistadors in the 1500s shortly after Columbus' voyages. Most slaves were shipped to sugar colonies in the Caribbean and to Brazil, where life expectancy was about seven years.[69] Life expectancy was much higher in North America because of less disease and better food and treatment, so the numbers of slaves grew rapidly into the millions by excesses of births over deaths.[70][71]
Colonial society was largely divided over the religious and moral implications of slavery and many colonies passed acts for and against the practice.[72][73] By the turn of the 18th century, African slaves were becoming the primary source of bonded labor in many regions.[74] Some colonists participated in the lucrative, slave oriented "Golden Triangle", involving planters, merchants of various types, shippers, and the African tribal chiefs who provided them with slaves.[55][75]
With the 1729 division of the Carolinas and the 1732 colonization of Georgia, the 13 colonies that would become the United States of America were established.[76] All had local governments with elections open to most free men, with a growing devotion to the ancient rights of Englishmen and a sense of self-government stimulating support for republicanism.[77] With extremely high birth rates, low death rates, and steady settlement, the colonial population grew rapidly. Relatively small Indian populations were eclipsed.[78] The Christian revivalist movement of the 1730s and 1740s known as the Great Awakening fueled interest in both religion and religious liberty.
In the French and Indian War, British forces seized Canada from the French, but the francophone population remained politically isolated from the southern colonies. Excluding the Native Americans, who were being conquered and displaced, those 13 colonies had a population of over 2.1 million in 1770, about one-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.[79] The colonies' distance from Britain had allowed the development of self-government, but their success motivated monarchs to periodically seek to reassert Royal authority.
Independence and expansion
Further information: American Revolutionary War, Declaration of Independence, and American Revolution
The American Revolution was the first successful colonial war of independence against a European power. Americans had developed a democratic system of local government and an ideology of "republicanism" that held government rested on the will of the people (not the king), which strongly opposed corruption and demanded civic virtue. They demanded their rights as Englishmen and rejected British efforts to impose taxes without the approval of colonial legislatures. The British insisted and the conflict escalated to full-scale war in 1775, the American Revolutionary War.[80] On June 14, 1775, the Continental Congress, convening in Philadelphia, established a Continental Army under the command of George Washington.[81] Proclaiming that "all men are created equal" and endowed with "certain unalienable Rights", the Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, drafted largely by Thomas Jefferson, on July 4, 1776. That date is now celebrated annually as America's Independence Day. In 1777, the Articles of Confederation established a weak government that operated until 1789.[82]

The Declaration of Independence: the Committee of Five presenting their draft to the Second Continental Congress in 1776.
U.S. Territories were acquired, organized with citizens, republican self-government, then admitted states on equal footing.
After a naval victory followed by the British defeat at Yorktown by American forces assisted by the French,[83] the United States was independent. In the peace treaty of 1783 Britain recognized American sovereignty over most territory east of the Mississippi River. Nationalists calling for a much stronger federal government with powers of taxation led the constitutional convention in 1787. After intense debate in state conventions the United States Constitution was ratified in 1788. The first Senate, House of Representatives, and president—George Washington—took office in 1789. The Bill of Rights, forbidding federal restriction of personal freedoms and guaranteeing a range of legal protections, was adopted in 1791.[84]
Attitudes toward slavery were shifting; nearly all states officially outlawed the international slave trade before the federal government criminalized it in 1808.[85] Slavery had become more pronounced in the south than the north because the land there was better suited for large scale cash crop cultivation than the rocky ground and cooler climate of New England.[86][87] All the Northern states abolished slavery between 1780 and 1804, leaving the slave states of the South as defenders of the "peculiar institution". With cotton a highly profitable plantation crop after 1820, slave interests in the Southern states maintained that slavery was a positive good for everyone, including the slaves.[88] The Second Great Awakening, beginning about 1800, converted millions to evangelical Protestantism. In the North it energized multiple social reform movements, including abolitionism.[89]
Americans' eagerness to expand westward prompted a long series of Indian Wars.[90] The Louisiana Purchase of French-claimed territory under President Thomas Jefferson in 1803 almost doubled the nation's size.[91] The War of 1812, declared against Britain over various grievances and fought to a draw, strengthened U.S. nationalism.[92] A series of U.S. military incursions into Florida led Spain to cede it and other Gulf Coast territory in 1819.[93]
President Andrew Jackson took office in 1829, and began a set of reforms which led to the era of Jacksonian democracy, which is considered to have lasted from 1830 to 1850. This included many reforms, such as wider male suffrage, and various adjustments to the power of the Federal government. This also led to the rise of the Second Party System, which refers to the dominant parties which existed from 1828 to 1854.
The Trail of Tears in the 1830s exemplified the Indian removal policy that moved Indians to their own reservations, sometimes by force, with small annual government subsidies. The United States annexed the Republic of Texas in 1845, amid a period when the concept of Manifest Destiny was becoming popular.[94] The 1846 Oregon Treaty with Britain led to U.S. control of the present-day American Northwest.[95] The U.S. victory in the Mexican-American War resulted in the 1848 cession of California and much of the present-day American Southwest.[96]
The California Gold Rush of 1848–49 further spurred western migration.[97] New railways made relocation easier for settlers and increased conflicts with Native Americans.[98] Over a half-century, up to 40 million American bison, or buffalo, were slaughtered for skins and meat and to ease the railways' spread.[99] The loss of the buffalo, a primary resource for the plains Indians, was an existential blow to many native cultures.[99] In 1869, President Ulysses S. Grant's Peace policy reversed the previous costly policy of "wars of extermination" in order to civilize and give Indians eventual United State citizenship having incorporated Indians as wards of the state, led by a philanthropic Board of Indian Commissioners.[100]
Civil War and Reconstruction Era


Battle of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The Civil War cemented the Union and spurred the steel industry and intercontinental railroad construction.
Further information: American Civil War and Reconstruction Era
Starting in the 1780s inherent divisions between the North and the South in American society over slavery ultimately led to the American Civil War.[101] Initially, the Founders of the nation had been able to keep the Union solvent by compromises worked out at the Constitutional Convention and to remain a single nation.[101]
During the years leading up to the American Civil War tensions between slave and free states mounted with arguments about the relationship between the state and federal governments, as well as violent conflicts over the spread of slavery into new states.[102] Abraham Lincoln, candidate of the largely antislavery Republican Party, was elected president in 1860.[103] Before he took office, seven slave states declared their secession—which the federal government maintained was illegal—and formed the Confederate States of America.[104]
With the Confederate attack upon Fort Sumter, the Civil War began and four more slave states joined the Confederacy.[104] Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 declared slaves in the Confederacy to be free, though not those in Union slave states. Following the Union victory in 1865, three amendments to the U.S. Constitution ensured freedom for the nearly four million African Americans who had been slaves,[105] made them citizens, and gave them voting rights. The war and its resolution led to a substantial increase in federal power.[106] The war remains the deadliest conflict in American history, resulting in the deaths of 620,000 soldiers.[107]
The assassination of Abraham Lincoln radicalized Republican Reconstruction policies aimed at reintegrating and rebuilding the Southern states while ensuring the rights of the newly freed slaves.[108] President Ulysses S. Grant implemented the Department of Justice and used the U.S. Military to enforce suffrage and civil rights for African Americans in the South destroying the Ku Klux Klan in 1871 under the Force Acts.[109] The resolution of the disputed 1876 presidential election by the Compromise of 1877 ended Reconstruction; Jim Crow laws soon disenfranchised many African Americans.[108]
Industrialization


Ellis Island, New York City. East Coast immigrants worked in factories, railroads, and mines, and created demand for industrialized agriculture.
In the North, urbanization and an unprecedented influx of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe hastened the country's industrialization. The wave of immigration, lasting until 1924, provided labor and transformed American culture.[110] United States immigration policies were Eurocentric, which barred Asians from naturalization, and restricted their immigration beginning with the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882.[111] National infrastructure development spurred economic growth. The end of the Civil War spurred greater settlement and development of the American Old West. This was due to a variety of social and technological developments, including the completion of the First Transcontinental Telegraph in 1861 and the First Transcontinental Railroad in 1869.
The 1867 Alaska Purchase from Russia completed the country's mainland expansion. The Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890 was the last major armed conflict of the Indian Wars. In 1893, the indigenous monarchy of the Pacific Kingdom of Hawaii was overthrown in a coup led by American residents; the United States annexed the archipelago in 1898. Victory in the Spanish–American War the same year demonstrated that the United States was a world power and led to the annexation of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines.[112] The Philippines gained independence a half-century later; Puerto Rico and Guam remain U.S. territories.
The emergence of many prominent industrialists at the end of the 19th century gave rise to the Gilded Age, a period of growing affluence and power among the business class. The hardships the working classes experienced during this period led to the rise of anarchist and socialist movements in the US.[113] In 1914 alone, 35,000 workers died in industrial accidents and 700,000 were injured.[114] This period eventually ended with the beginning of the Progressive Era, a period of significant reforms in many societal areas, including regulatory protection for the public, greater antitrust measures, and attention to living conditions for the working classes. President Theodore Roosevelt was one leading proponent of progressive reforms.
World War I, Great Depression, and World War II
Further information: World War I, Great Depression, and World War II
At the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the United States remained neutral. Most Americans sympathized with the British and French, although many opposed intervention.[115] In 1917, the United States joined the Allies, and the American Expeditionary Forces helped to turn the tide against the Central Powers. President Woodrow Wilson took a leading diplomatic role at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 which helped to shape the post-war world. Wilson 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, which established the League of Nations.[116]

The Dust Bowl brought agricultural depression, impacted industrial markets, and led to large relocation out of the Great Plains.
WWII invasion of Europe required war industry, accelerating migration to big cities and large scale manufacturing
The country pursued a policy of unilateralism, verging on isolationism.[116] In 1920, the women's rights movement, led by Carrie Chapman Catt, won passage of a constitutional amendment granting women's suffrage.[117] The prosperity of the Roaring Twenties ended with the Wall Street Crash of 1929 that triggered the Great Depression.
After his election as president in 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt responded with the New Deal, a range of policies increasing government intervention in the economy, including the establishment of the Social Security system.[118] The Dust Bowl of the mid-1930s impoverished many farming communities and spurred a new wave of western migration.
The United States, effectively neutral during World War II's early stages after Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland in September 1939, began supplying material 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 as well as the internment of Japanese Americans by the thousands.[119] Participation in the war spurred capital investment and industrial capacity, and the production figures after the Americans started to unfold the awesome productive capacity of their economy became the stuff of legend.[120] Though the nation lost more than 400,000 soldiers,[121] among the major combatants, the United States was the only nation to become richer because of the war.[122]
Allied conferences at Bretton Woods and Yalta outlined a new system of international organizations that placed the United States and Soviet Union at the center of world affairs. As victory was won in Europe, a 1945 international conference held in San Francisco produced the United Nations Charter, which became active after the war.[123] The United States, having developed the first nuclear weapons, used them on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August. Japan surrendered on September 2, ending the war.[124]
Cold War and Civil Rights era

Civil Rights leaders, including Ralph Abernathy and Martin Luther King, Jr., lead one of the Selma to Montgomery marches
A vehicle enters West Berlin through the Western Allies' Checkpoint Charlie after the fall of the Berlin Wall, marking the beginning of the end of the Cold War
The United States and the Soviet Union jockeyed for power after World War II during the Cold War, dominating the military affairs of Europe through NATO and the Warsaw Pact, respectively. While they engaged in proxy wars and developed powerful nuclear arsenals, the two countries avoided direct military conflict. The U.S. often opposed Third World left-wing movements that it viewed as Soviet-sponsored. American troops fought Communist Chinese and North Korean forces in the Korean War of 1950–53. The House Un-American Activities Committee pursued a series of investigations into suspected leftist subversion, while Senator Joseph McCarthy became the figurehead of anticommunist sentiment.[125]
The 1961 Soviet launch of the first manned spaceflight prompted President John F. Kennedy's call for the United States to be first to land "a man on the moon", achieved in 1969.[126] Kennedy also faced a tense nuclear showdown with Soviet forces in Cuba.[127] Meanwhile, the United States experienced sustained economic expansion. Amidst the presence of various white nationalist groups, particularly the Ku Klux Klan, a growing civil rights movement used nonviolence to confront segregation and discrimination. This was symbolized and led by black Americans such as Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. On the other hand, some black nationalist groups such as the Black Panther Party and Malcolm X had a more militant scope.
Following Kennedy's assassination in 1963, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Voting Rights Act of 1965, and Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 were passed under President Lyndon B. Johnson.[128] He also signed into law the Medicare and Medicaid programs.[129] Johnson also expanded a proxy war in Southeast Asia into the ultimately unsuccessful Vietnam War. A widespread countercultural movement grew, fueled by opposition to the war, black nationalism, and the sexual revolution. Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, and others led a new wave of feminism that sought political, social, and economic equality for women.
As president, Richard Nixon ended U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, improved relations with China, and oversaw the beginning of a period of generally eased relations with the Soviet Union. As a result of the Watergate scandal, in 1974 Nixon became the first U.S. president to resign, to avoid being impeached on charges including obstruction of justice and abuse of power. The Jimmy Carter administration of the late 1970s was marked by stagflation and the Iran hostage crisis. The election of Ronald Reagan as president in 1980 heralded a rightward shift in American politics,[130][131][132][133] reflected in major changes in taxation and spending priorities.[134] His second term in office brought both the Iran–Contra scandal and significant diplomatic progress with the Soviet Union.[135] The subsequent Soviet collapse ended the Cold War.[136][137][138] [139][140]
Contemporary era


September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City.
Under President George H. W. Bush, the United States took a lead role in the UN–sanctioned Gulf War.[141] The longest economic expansion in modern U.S. history—from March 1991 to March 2001—encompassed the Bill Clinton administration and the dot-com bubble.[142]
On September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda terrorists under the leadership of Osama bin Laden struck the World Trade Center in New York City and The Pentagon near Washington, D.C., killing nearly 3,000 people.[143] In response, the George W. Bush administration launched the global War on Terror, invading Afghanistan and removing the Taliban government and al-Qaeda training camps.[144] Bin Laden was killed by a Navy SEAL raid in Pakistan in 2011;[145] Taliban insurgents continue to fight a guerrilla war.[146] In 2003, the United States and several allied forces invaded Iraq to engineer regime change there; the war lasted eight years.[147][148][149] In 2005, Hurricane Katrina caused severe destruction along much of the Gulf Coast, devastating New Orleans.[150]
In 2008, amid a global economic recession, the first African-American president, Barack Obama, was elected.[151]
Geography, climate, and environment

Main articles: Geography of the United States, Climate of the United States, and Environment of the United States


A composite satellite image of the contiguous United States
The land area of the contiguous United States is 2,959,064 square miles (7,663,941 km2). Alaska, separated from the contiguous United States by Canada, is the largest state at 663,268 square miles (1,717,856 km2). Hawaii, occupying an archipelago in the central Pacific, southwest of North America, is 10,931 square miles (28,311 km2) in area.[152]
The United States is the world's third or fourth largest nation by total area (land and water), ranking behind Russia and Canada and just above or below 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: calculations range from 3,676,486 square miles (9,522,055 km2)[153] to 3,717,813 square miles (9,629,091 km2)[154] to 3,794,101 square miles (9,826,676 km2).[4] Measured by only land area, the United States is third in size behind Russia and China, just ahead of Canada.[155]
The coastal plain of the Atlantic seaboard gives way further inland to deciduous forests and the rolling hills of the Piedmont. The Appalachian Mountains divide the eastern seaboard from the Great Lakes and the grasslands of the Midwest. The Mississippi–Missouri River, the world's fourth longest river system, runs mainly north–south through the heart of the country. The flat, fertile prairie of the Great Plains stretches to the west, interrupted by a highland region in the southeast.


A Bald Eagle, the national bird of the United States since 1782.
The Rocky Mountains, at the western edge of the Great Plains, extend north to south across the country, reaching altitudes higher than 14,000 feet (4,300 m) in Colorado. Farther west are the rocky Great Basin and deserts such as the Chihuahua and Mojave. 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 continental United States are in the state of California, and only about 80 miles (130 km) apart. At 20,320 feet (6,194 m), Alaska's Mount McKinley is the tallest peak in the country and in North America. 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.[156]
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. The southern tip of Florida is tropical, as is Hawaii. The Great Plains west of the 100th meridian are semi-arid. Much of the Western mountains are alpine. The climate is arid in the Great Basin, desert in the Southwest, Mediterranean in coastal California, and oceanic in coastal Oregon and Washington and southern Alaska. Most of Alaska is subarctic or polar. Extreme weather is not uncommon—the states bordering the Gulf of Mexico are prone to hurricanes, and most of the world's tornadoes occur within the country, mainly in the Midwest's Tornado Alley.[157]
The U.S. ecology is considered "megadiverse": about 17,000 species of vascular plants occur in the contiguous United States and Alaska, and over 1,800 species of flowering plants are found in Hawaii, few of which occur on the mainland.[158] The United States is home to more than 400 mammal, 750 bird, and 500 reptile and amphibian species.[159] About 91,000 insect species have been described.[160]
There are 58 national parks and hundreds of other federally managed parks, forests, and wilderness areas.[161] Altogether, the government owns 28.8% of the country's land area.[162][dead link] Most of this is protected, though some is leased for oil and gas drilling, mining, logging, or cattle ranching; 2.4% is used for military purposes.[162][dead link][163][164]
Environmental issues
Main articles: Environmental issues in the United States and Conservation movement#United States
Environmental issues have been high on the national agenda since 1970. The controversies include debates on oil and nuclear energy, dealing with air and water pollution, the economic costs of protecting wildlife, and international responses to global warming, especially the Kyoto Protocol[165][166]
Many federal and state agencies are involved. The most prominent is the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), created by presidential order in 1970.[167] The idea of wilderness has shaped the management of public lands since 1964, with the Wilderness Act.[168] The Endangered Species Act of 1973 protects threatened and endangered species and their habitats, which are monitored by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service.
Demographics

Main articles: Demographics of the United States, Americans, and List of United States cities by population
Population


Largest ancestry groups by county, 2000
Race/Ethnicity
(as given by the 2010 Census)[169]
By race:
White 72.4%
Black American 12.6%
Asian 4.8%
American Indian and Alaska Native 0.9%
Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander 0.2%
Other 6.2%
Multiracial (2 or more) 2.9%
By ethnicity:[170]
Hispanic/Latino (of any race) 16.3%
Non-Hispanic/Latino (of any race) 83.7%
The U.S. Census Bureau estimates the country's population now to be 316,663,000,[5] including an approximate 11.2 million illegal aliens.[171] The U.S. population almost quadrupled during the 20th century, from about 76 million in 1900.[172] The third most populous nation in the world, after China and India, the United States is the only major industrialized nation in which large population increases are projected.[173]
With a birth rate of 13 per 1,000, 35% below the world average, its population growth rate is positive at 0.9%, significantly higher than those of many developed nations.[174] In fiscal year 2012, over one million immigrants (most of whom entered through family reunification) were granted legal residence.[175] Mexico has been the leading source of new residents for over two decades; since 1998, China, India, and the Philippines have been in the top four sending countries every year.[176][177] 9 million Americans identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender, making up four percent of the population.[178] A 2010 survey found that seven percent of men and eight percent of women identified as gay, lesbian or bisexual.[179]
The United States has a very diverse population—31 ancestry groups have more than one million members.[180] White Americans are the largest racial group; German Americans, Irish Americans, and English Americans constitute three of the country's four largest ancestry groups.[180] Black Americans are the nation's largest racial minority and third largest ancestry group.[180] Asian Americans are the country's second largest racial minority; the three largest Asian American ethnic groups are Chinese Americans, Filipino Americans, and Indian Americans.[180]
In 2010, the U.S. population included an estimated 5.2 million people with some American Indian or Alaska Native ancestry (2.9 million exclusively of such ancestry) and 1.2 million with some native Hawaiian or Pacific island ancestry (0.5 million exclusively).[181] The census counted more than 19 million people of "Some Other Race" who were "unable to identify with any" of its five official race categories in 2010.[181]
The population growth of Hispanic and Latino Americans (the terms are officially interchangeable) is a major demographic trend. The 50.5 million Americans of Hispanic descent[181] are identified as sharing a distinct "ethnicity" by the Census Bureau; 64% of Hispanic Americans are of Mexican descent.[182] Between 2000 and 2010, the country's Hispanic population increased 43% while the non-Hispanic population rose just 4.9%.[169] Much of this growth is from immigration; as of 2007, 12.6% of the U.S. population was foreign-born, with 54% of that figure born in Latin America.[183]
Fertility is also a factor; as of 2010 the average Hispanic (of any race) woman gave birth to 2.35 children in her lifetime, compared to 1.97 for non-Hispanic black women and 1.79 for non-Hispanic white women (both below the replacement rate of 2.1).[184] Minorities (as defined by the Census Bureau as all those beside non-Hispanic, non-multiracial whites) constituted 36.3% of the population in 2010,[185] and over 50% of children under age one,[186] and are projected to constitute the majority by 2042.[187] This contradicts the report by the National Vital Statistics Reports, based on the U.S. census data, which concludes that, 54% (2,162,406 out of 3,999,386 in 2010) of births were non-Hispanic white.[184]
About 82% of Americans live in urban areas (including suburbs);[4] about half of those reside in cities with populations over 50,000.[188] In 2008, 273 incorporated places had populations over 100,000, nine cities had more than one million residents, and four global cities had over two million (New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston).[189]
There are 52 metropolitan areas with populations greater than one million.[190] Of the 50 fastest-growing metro areas, 47 are in the West or South.[191] The metro areas of Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, and Phoenix all grew by more than a million people between 2000 and 2008.[190]
Leading population centers (see complete list) view talk edit
Rank Core city (cities) Metro area population Metropolitan Statistical Area Region[192]
New York City
New York City

Los Angeles
Los Angeles

Chicago
Chicago
1 New York City 19,015,900 New York–New Jersey–Connecticut–Pennsylvania, NY–NJ–CT–PA MSA Northeast
2 Los Angeles 12,944,801 Los Angeles–Long Beach–Santa Ana, CA MSA West
3 Chicago 9,504,753 Chicago–Joliet–Naperville, IL–IN–WI MSA Midwest
4 Dallas–Fort Worth 6,526,548 Dallas–Fort Worth–Arlington, TX MSA South
5 Houston 6,086,538 Houston–The Woodlands-Sugar Land MSA South
6 Philadelphia 5,992,414 Philadelphia–Camden–Wilmington, PA–NJ–DE–MD MSA Northeast
7 Washington, D.C. 5,703,948 Washington, DC–VA–MD–WV MSA Northeast
8 Miami 5,670,125 Miami–Fort Lauderdale–Pompano Beach, FL MSA South
9 Atlanta 5,359,205 Atlanta–Sandy Springs–Marietta, GA MSA South
10 Boston 4,591,112 Boston–Cambridge–Quincy, MA–NH MSA Northeast
11 San Francisco 4,391,037 San Francisco–Oakland–Fremont, CA MSA West
12 San Bernardino-Riverside 4,304,997 San Bernandino–Riverside–Ontario, CA MSA West
13 Detroit 4,285,832 Detroit–Warren–Livonia, MI MSA Midwest
14 Phoenix 4,263,236 Phoenix–Mesa–Glendale, AZ MSA West
15 Seattle 3,500,026 Seattle–Tacoma–Bellevue, WA MSA West
16 Minneapolis–St. Paul 3,318,486 Minneapolis–St. Paul–Bloomington, MN–WI MSA Midwest
17 San Diego 3,140,069 San Diego–Carlsbad–San Marcos, CA MSA West
18 Tampa–St. Petersburg 2,824,724 Tampa–St. Petersburg–Clearwater, FL MSA South
19 St. Louis 2,817,355 St. Louis–St. Charles–Farmington, MO–IL MSA Midwest
20 Baltimore 2,729,110 Baltimore–Towson, MD MSA Northeast
based upon 2011 population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau[193]

Language
Main article: Languages of the United States
See also: Language Spoken at Home and List of endangered languages in the United States
Languages spoken by more than 500,000 in the United States[194]
Language
(as of 2010) Percentage of population Number of speakers
English 80.38% 233,780,338
Combined total of all languages other than English 19.62% 57,048,617
Spanish (excluding Puerto Rico's total and Spanish Creole) 12.19% 35,437,985
Chinese (including Cantonese and Mandarin) 0.89% 2,567,779
Tagalog 0.53% 1,542,118
Vietnamese 0.44% 1,292,448
French 0.44% 1,288,833
Korean 0.38% 1,108,408
German 0.38% 1,107,869
Russian 0.29% 836,171
Arabic 0.26% 764,753
Italian 0.26% 764,326
Portuguese (excluding Portuguese Creole) 0.24% 684,493
French Creole (including Haitian Creole, Louisiana Creole, etc.) 0.23% 663,828
Polish 0.21% 604,234
Hindi 0.20% 586,173
English (American English) is the de facto national language. Although there is no official language at the federal level, some laws—such as U.S. naturalization requirements—standardize English. In 2010, about 230 million, or 80% of the population aged five years and older, spoke only English at home. Spanish, spoken by 12% of the population at home, is the second most common language and the most widely taught second language.[195][196] Some Americans advocate making English the country's official language, as it is in at least 28 states.[9]
Both Hawaiian and English are official languages in Hawaii, by state law.[197] While neither has an official language, New Mexico has laws providing for the use of both English and Spanish, as Louisiana does for English and French.[198] Other states, such as California, mandate the publication of Spanish versions of certain government documents including court forms.[199] Many jurisdictions with large numbers of non-English speakers produce government materials, especially voting information, in the most commonly spoken languages in those jurisdictions.
Several insular territories grant official recognition to their native languages, along with English: Samoan and Chamorro are recognized by American Samoa and Guam, respectively; Carolinian and Chamorro are recognized by the Northern Mariana Islands; Spanish is an official language of Puerto Rico and is more widely spoken than English there.
Religion
Gnome globe current event.svg
This section's factual accuracy may be compromised due to out-of-date information. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page. Please update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. (March 2013)
Main article: Religion in the United States
See also: History of religion in the United States, Freedom of religion in the United States, Separation of church and state in the United States, and List of religious movements that began in the United States


A pie chart of religious groups in the U.S. (2007)


The area roughly considered to constitute the Bible Belt
The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees the free exercise of religion and forbids Congress from passing laws respecting its establishment. Christianity is by far the most common religion practiced in the US, but other religions are followed too.
In a 2002 study, 59% of Americans said that religion played a "very important role in their lives", a far higher figure than that of any other wealthy nation.[200]
In a 2009 Gallup poll, 42% of Americans said that they attended church weekly or almost weekly; the figures ranged from a low of 23% in Vermont to a high of 63% in Mississippi.[201]
According to a 2007 survey, 78.4% of adults identified themselves as Christian,[202] down from 86.4% in 1990.[203] Protestant denominations accounted for 51.3%, while Roman Catholicism, at 23.9%, was the largest individual denomination.[202] The total reporting non-Christian religions in 2007 was 4.7%, up from 3.3% in 1990.[203] Other religions include Judaism (1.7%), Buddhism (0.7%), Islam (0.6%), Hinduism (0.4%), and Unitarian Universalism (0.3%).[202] The survey also reported that 16.1% of Americans described themselves as agnostic, atheist, or simply having no religion, up from 8.2% in 1990.[202][203][204] There are also Baha'i, Sikh, Jain, Shinto, Confucian, Taoist, Druid, Native American, Wiccan, humanist and deist communities.[205]
Protestantism is the largest group of religions in the United States, with Baptists being the largest Protestant sect, and the Southern Baptist Convention being the largest Protestant denomination in the U.S. Roman Catholicism in the US has its origin in the Spanish and French colonization of the Americas, and later grew due to Irish, Italian, Polish, German and Hispanic immigration. Rhode Island is the only state where the majority of the population is Catholic. Lutheranism in the US has its origin in immigration from Northern Europe. North and South Dakota are the only states in which a plurality of the population is Lutheran. Utah is the only state where Mormonism is the religion of the majority of the population. Mormonism is also relatively common in parts of Idaho, Nevada and Wyoming.
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.[201]
As with ofter Western countries, the US is becoming less religious. Irreligion is growing rapidly among Americans under 30.[206] Polls show that overall American confidence in organized religion is declining,[207] and that younger Americans in particular are becoming increasingly irreligious.[208]
Family structure
Main article: Family structure in the United States
In 2007, 58% of Americans age 18 and over were married, 6% were widowed, 10% were divorced, and 25% had never been married.[209] Women now work mostly outside the home and receive a majority of bachelor's degrees.[210]
The U.S. teenage pregnancy rate, 79.8 per 1,000 women, is the highest among OECD nations.[211] Between 2007 and 2010, the highest teenage birth rate was in Mississippi, and the lowest in New Hampshire.[212] While the abortion rate is falling, the abortion ratio of 241 per 1,000 live births and abortion rate of 15 per 1,000 women aged 15–44 remain higher than those of most Western nations.[213] In 2011, the average age at first birth was 25.6 and 40.7% of births were to unmarried women.[214] The total fertility rate (TFR) was estimated for 2013 at 2.06 births per woman.[215]
Adoption in the United States is common and relatively easy from a legal point of view (compared to other Western countries).[216] In 2001, with over 127,000 adoptions, the US accounted for nearly half of the total number of adoptions worldwide.[217]
Same-sex marriage is legally recognized in 13 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.
Government and politics

Main articles: Federal government of the United States, state governments of the United States, and elections in the United States

U.S. Capitol seats the Congress:
the Senate, left; the House, right
The White House used by the U.S. President
Supreme Court and offices for nine Justices


Political system of the United States
The United States is the world's oldest surviving federation. It is a constitutional republic and representative democracy, "in which majority rule is tempered by minority rights protected by law".[218] 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.[219]
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. There is no proportional representation at the federal level, and it is very rare at lower levels.
The federal government is composed of 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,[220] and has the power of impeachment, by which it can remove sitting members of the government.[221]
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.[222]
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.
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 every tenth year. As of the 2010 census, seven states have the minimum of one representative, while California, the most populous state, has 53.[223]
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 other year. 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.[224] The Supreme Court, led by the Chief Justice of the United States, has nine members, who serve for life.[225]
The state governments are structured in roughly similar fashion; Nebraska uniquely has a unicameral legislature.[226] The governor (chief executive) of each state is directly elected. Some state judges and cabinet officers are appointed by the governors of the respective states, while others are elected by popular vote.
The original text of 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 "great writ" of habeas corpus, The Constitution has been amended 27 times;[227] the first 10 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 ruled in violation of the Constitution is voided. The principle of judicial review, not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution, was declared by the Supreme Court in Marbury v. Madison (1803),[228] a decision handed down by Chief Justice John Marshall.[229]
For 2012, the US ranked 21st on the Democracy Index[230] and 19th on the Corruption Perceptions Index.[231]
Political divisions
Main articles: Political divisions of the United States, U.S. state, and Territories of the United States
Further information: Territorial evolution of the United States and United States territorial acquisitions
The United States is a federal union of 50 states. The original 13 states were the successors of the 13 colonies that rebelled against British rule. Early in the country's history, three new states were organized on territory separated from the claims of the existing states: Kentucky from Virginia; Tennessee from North Carolina; and Maine from Massachusetts. Most of the other states have been carved from territories obtained through war or purchase by the U.S. government. One set of exceptions includes Vermont, Texas, and Hawaii: each was an independent republic before joining the union. During the American Civil War, West Virginia broke away from Virginia. The most recent state—Hawaii—achieved statehood on August 21, 1959.[232] The states do not have the right to unilaterally secede from the union.
The states compose the vast bulk of the U.S. land mass; the two other areas considered integral parts of the country are the District of Columbia, the federal district where the capital, Washington, is located; and Palmyra Atoll, an uninhabited but incorporated territory in the Pacific Ocean. The United States also possesses five major overseas territories: Puerto Rico and the United States Virgin Islands in the Caribbean; and American Samoa, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands in the Pacific.[233] Those born in the major territories are birthright U.S. citizens except Samoans. Samoans born in American Samoa are born U.S. nationals, and may become naturalized citizens.[234] American citizens residing in the territories have fundamental constitutional protections and elective self-government, with a territorial Member of Congress, but they do not vote for president as states. Territories have personal and business tax regimes different from that of states.[235]
The United States also observes tribal sovereignty of the Native Nations. Though reservations are within state borders, the reservation is a sovereign. While the United States recognizes this sovereignty, other countries may not.[236]
 Map of USA with state names 2.svg
About this image
Parties and elections
Main articles: Politics of the United States and Political ideologies in the United States


(from left to right) House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, House Speaker John Boehner, President Barack Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell at the White House in 2011
The United States has operated under a two-party system for most of its history.[237] 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. The third-largest political party is the Libertarian Party.
Within American political culture, the Republican Party is considered center-right or conservative and the Democratic Party is considered center-left or liberal.[238] 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.
The winner of the 2008 presidential election and the 2012 presidential election, Democrat Barack Obama, is the 44th U.S. president.
In the 113th United States Congress, the House of Representatives is controlled by the Republican Party, while the Democratic Party has control of the Senate. The Senate currently consists of 52 Democrats, two independents who caucus with the Democrats, and 46 Republicans; the House consists of 234 Republicans and 201 Democrats.[239] There are 30 Republican and 20 Democratic state governors.[240]
Since the founding of the United States until 2000s, the country's governance has been primarily dominated by White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs). However, the situation has changed recently and of the top 17 positions (four national candidates of the two major party in the 2012 U.S. presidential election, four leaders in 112th United States Congress, and nine Supreme Court Justices) there is only one WASP.[241][242][243]
Foreign relations
Main articles: Foreign relations of the United States and Foreign policy of the United States
See also: Covert United States foreign regime change actions


British Foreign Secretary William Hague and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, May 2010
The United States has established foreign relations. It is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, and New York City hosts the United Nations Headquarters. It is a member of the G8,[244] G20, and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. 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, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Bhutan, and the Republic of China (Taiwan) do not have formal diplomatic relations with the United States (although the U.S. still supplies Taiwan with military equipment).
The United States has a "special relationship" with the United Kingdom[245] and strong ties with Canada,[246] Australia,[247] New Zealand,[248] the Philippines,[249] Japan,[250] South Korea,[251] Israel,[252] and several European countries such as France and Germany. 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 North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico. In 2008, the United States spent a net $25.4 billion on official development assistance, the most in the world. As a share of America's large gross national income (GNI), however, the U.S. contribution of 0.18% ranked last among 22 donor states. By contrast, private overseas giving by Americans is relatively generous.[253]
Government finance
See also: Taxation in the United States and United States federal budget
Taxes are levied in the United States at the federal, state and local government level. These include taxes on income, payroll, property, sales, imports, estates and gifts, as well as various fees. In 2010 taxes collected by federal, state and municipal governments amounted to 24.8% of GDP.[254] During FY2012, the federal government collected approximately $2.45 trillion in tax revenue, up $147 billion or 6% versus FY2011 revenues of $2.30 trillion. Primary receipt categories included individual income taxes ($1,132B or 47%), Social Security/Social Insurance taxes ($845B or 35%), and corporate taxes ($242B or 10%).[255]
US taxation is generally progressive, especially the federal income taxes, and is among the most progressive in the developed world.[256][257][258][259][260] In 2009 the top 10% of earners, with 36% of the nation's income, paid 78.2% of the federal personal income tax burden, while the bottom 40% had a negative liability.[257] Payroll taxes are less progressive, as the entitlement programs they ostensibly fund have historically not been viewed as welfare transfers.[261][262] The top 10% paid 51.8% of total federal taxes in 2009, and the top 1%, with 13.4% of pre-tax national income, paid 22.3% of federal taxes.[257] In 2013 the Tax Policy Center projected total federal effective tax rates of 35.5% for the top 1%, 27.2% for the top quintile, 13.8% for the middle quintile, and −2.7% for the bottom quintile.[263][264] State and local taxes vary widely, but are generally less progressive than federal taxes as they rely heavily on broadly borne regressive sales and property taxes that yield less volatile revenue streams, though their consideration does not eliminate the progressive nature of overall taxation.[265][266]
During FY 2012, the federal government spent $3.54 trillion on a budget or cash basis, down $60 billion or 1.7% vs. FY 2011 spending of $3.60 trillion. Major categories of FY 2012 spending included: Medicare & Medicaid ($802B or 23% of spending), Social Security ($768B or 22%), Defense Department ($670B or 19%), non-defense discretionary ($615B or 17%), other mandatory ($461B or 13%) and interest ($223B or 6%).[255]
Public debt


U.S. federal debt held by the public as a percentage of GDP, from 1940 to 2012.
Main article: National debt of the United States
In March 2013, US federal government debt held by the public was approximately $11.888 trillion, or about 75% of US GDP. Intra-governmental holdings stood at $4.861 trillion, giving a combined total debt of $16.749 trillion.[19][267] By 2012 total federal debt had surpassed 100% of US GDP.[268] The US has a credit rating of AA+ from Standard & Poor's, AAA from Fitch, and Aaa from Moody's.[269]
Historically, the US public debt as a share of GDP increased during wars and recessions, and subsequently declined. For example, debt held by the public as a share of GDP peaked just after World War II (113% of GDP in 1945), but then fell over the following 30 years. In recent decades, large budget deficits and the resulting increases in debt have led to concern about the long-term sustainability of the federal government's fiscal policies.[270] However, these concerns are not universally shared.[271]
Military

Main article: United States Armed Forces
The president holds the title of commander-in-chief of the nation's armed forces and appoints its leaders, the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The United States Department of Defense administers the armed forces, including the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force. The Coast Guard is run by the Department of Homeland Security in peacetime and the Department of the Navy in time of war. In 2008, the armed forces had 1.4 million personnel on active duty. The Reserves and National Guard brought the total number of troops to 2.3 million. The Department of Defense also employed about 700,000 civilians, not including contractors.[272]


The carrier strike groups of the Kitty Hawk, Ronald Reagan, and Abraham Lincoln with aircraft from the Marine Corps, Navy, and Air Force.
Military service is voluntary, though conscription may occur in wartime through the Selective Service System.[273] 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's Atlantic and Pacific fleets. The military operates 865 bases and facilities abroad,[274] and maintains deployments greater than 100 active duty personnel in 25 foreign countries.[275] The extent of this global military presence has prompted some scholars to describe the United States as maintaining an "empire of bases".[276]
Total U.S. military spending in 2011, more than $700 billion, was 41% of global military spending and equal to the next 14 largest national military expenditures combined. At 4.7% of GDP, the rate was the second-highest among the top 15 military spenders, after Saudi Arabia.[277] U.S. defense spending as a percentage of GDP ranks 23rd globally as of 2012 according to the CIA.[278] Defense's share of U.S. spending has generally declined in recent decades, from Cold War peaks of 14.2% of GDP in 1953 and 69.5% of federal outlays in 1954 to 4.7% of GDP and 18.8% of federal outlays in 2011.[279]
The proposed base Department of Defense budget for 2012, $553 billion, is a 4.2% increase over 2011; an additional $118 billion is proposed for the military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.[280] The last American troops serving in Iraq departed in December 2011;[281] 4,484 servicemen were killed during the Iraq War.[282] Approximately 90,000 U.S. troops were serving in Afghanistan as of April 2012;[283] as of May 21, 2013, 2,039 had been killed during the War in Afghanistan.[284]
Law enforcement

Main articles: Law enforcement in the United States and Crime in the United States
See also: Law of the United States, Incarceration in the United States, Capital punishment in the United States, and Second Amendment to the United States Constitution


Law enforcement in the U.S. is maintained primarily by local police departments. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) is the largest in the country.[285]
Law enforcement in the United States is primarily the responsibility of local police and sheriff's departments, 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.[286] At the federal level and in almost every state, jurisprudence operates on a common law system.
State courts conduct most criminal trials; federal courts handle certain designated crimes as well as certain appeals from the state criminal courts. Federal law prohibits a variety of drugs, although states sometimes pass laws in conflict with federal regulations.
The smoking age is generally 18, and the drinking age is generally 21. The school leaving age is set by states and is usually in the range 16-18. The driving age in the US is generally 16, younger than in most other countries. Abortion on demand is legal throughout the US, owing to Roe v. Wade, an 1973 landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court. Abortion remains a highly controversial political and public issue. The US is one of few developed countries to retain laws against adultery. Adultery remains illegal in 22 states, although these laws are rarely enforced and are largely believed to be unconstitutional.
Among developed nations, the United States has above-average levels of violent crime and particularly high levels of gun violence and homicide.[287] There were 4.7 murders per 100,000 persons in 2011, 14.5% fewer than in 2000 (5.5), and 19.0% fewer since a recent peak of 5.8 in 2006.[288][289] Gun ownership rights are the subject of contentious political debate.
The United States has the highest documented incarceration rate[290] and total prison population[291] in the world. At the start of 2008, more than 2.3 million people were incarcerated, more than one in every 100 adults.[292] The current rate is about seven times the 1980 figure,[293] and over three times the figure in Poland, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) country with the next highest rate.[294] African American males are jailed at about six times the rate of white males and three times the rate of Hispanic males.[290] The country's high rate of incarceration is largely due to sentencing and drug policies.[290][295] In 2008, Louisiana had the highest incarceration rate, and Maine the lowest.[296]
Capital punishment is sanctioned in the United States for certain federal and military crimes, and used in 32 states.[297] While there are 32 states which include capital punishment within their sentencing statutes, some states (such as New Hampshire and Kansas) have yet to execute anyone since 1976, as demonstrated by the lack of any executions by these states out of the 1317 total executions which have taken place as of December 5, 2012. [298] No executions took place from 1967 to 1977, owing in part to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling striking down arbitrary imposition of the death penalty. In 1976, that Court ruled that, under appropriate circumstances, capital punishment may constitutionally be imposed; since the decision there have been more than 1,300 executions, a majority of these taking place in three states: Texas, Virginia, and Oklahoma.[299] Five state legislatures in the modern era have abolished the death penalty, though two of those laws (in New Mexico and Connecticut) were not retroactive. Additionally, state courts in Massachusetts and New York struck down death penalty statutes and their legislatures took no action in response. In 2010, the country had the fifth highest number of executions in the world, following China, Iran, North Korea, and Yemen.[300]
Economy

Main article: Economy of the United States
Economic indicators
Nominal GDP 15.984 trillion (Q1 2013) [301]
Real GDP growth 1.7% (Q2 2013, annualized)
2.2% (2012) [302]
CPI inflation 2.0% (February 2012 – February 2013) [303]
Employment-to-population ratio 58.5% (March 2013) [304]
Unemployment 7.4% (July 2013) [305]
Labor force participation rate 63.3% (March 2013) [306]
Poverty 15.1% (2010) [307]
Public debt $16.433 trillion (Q4 2012) [308]
Household net worth $58.5 trillion (Q4 2011) [309]
The United States has a capitalist mixed economy, which is fueled by abundant natural resources, a well-developed infrastructure, and high productivity.[310] According to the International Monetary Fund, the U.S. GDP of $15.1 trillion constitutes 22% of the gross world product at market exchange rates and over 19% of the gross world product at purchasing power parity (PPP).[19] Though larger than any other nations, its national GDP was about 5% smaller at PPP in 2011 than the European Union's, whose population is around 62% higher.[311] The country ranks ninth in the world in nominal GDP per capita and sixth in GDP per capita at PPP.[19] The U.S. dollar is the world's primary reserve currency.[312]
The United States is the largest importer of goods and second largest exporter, though exports per capita are relatively low. In 2010, the total U.S. trade deficit was $635 billion.[313] Canada, China, Mexico, Japan, and Germany are its top trading partners.[314] In 2010, oil was the largest import commodity, while transportation equipment was the country's largest export.[313] China is the largest foreign holder of U.S. public debt.[315]


The New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street, the world's largest stock exchange per total market capitalization of its listed companies.[316]
In 2009, the private sector was estimated to constitute 86.4% of the economy, with federal government activity accounting for 4.3% and state and local government activity (including federal transfers) the remaining 9.3%.[317] While its economy has reached a postindustrial level of development and its service sector constitutes 67.8% of GDP, the United States remains an industrial power.[318] The leading business field by gross business receipts is wholesale and retail trade; by net income it is manufacturing.[319]
Chemical products are the leading manufacturing field.[320] The United States is the third largest producer of oil in the world, as well as its largest importer.[321] It is the world's number one producer of electrical and nuclear energy, as well as liquid natural gas, sulfur, phosphates, and salt. While agriculture accounts for just under 1% of GDP,[318] the United States is the world's top producer of corn[322] and soybeans.[323] Coca-Cola and McDonald's are the two most recognized brands in the world.[324]
Consumer spending comprises 71% of the US economy in 2013.[325] In August 2010, the American labor force consisted of 154.1 million people. With 21.2 million people, government is the leading field of employment. The largest private employment sector is health care and social assistance, with 16.4 million people. About 12% of workers are unionized, compared to 30% in Western Europe.[326] The World Bank ranks the United States first in the ease of hiring and firing workers.[327] In 2009, the United States had the third highest labor productivity per person in the world, behind Luxembourg and Norway. It was fourth in productivity per hour, behind those two countries and the Netherlands.[328] The United States is the only advanced economy that that does not guarantee its workers paid vacation.[329]
The 2008-2012 global recession had a significant impact on the United States. For example, persistent high unemployment remains, along with low consumer confidence, the continuing decline in home values and increase in foreclosures and personal bankruptcies, an escalating federal debt crisis, inflation, and rising petroleum and food prices. In fact, a 2011 poll found that more than half of all Americans think the U.S. is still in recession or even depression, despite official data that shows a historically modest recovery.[330]
Income, poverty, and wealth
Main articles: Income in the United States, Poverty in the United States, and Wealth in the United States
See also: Income inequality in the United States and Affluence in the United States
Americans have the highest average household and employee income among OECD nations, and, as of 2007, the second highest median household income, behind only Luxembourg.[331][332] According to the Census Bureau real median household income was $50,502 in 2011, down from $51,144 in 2010.[333] The Global Food Security Index ranked the US #1 in food affordability and overall food security in March 2013.[334] The USDA Economic Research Service states that 14.5 percent of American households were food insecure during the year 2012.[335] According to the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation, Americans on average have over twice as much living space per dwelling and per person as Europeans, and more than every European nation.[336]
The US economy is currently embroiled in the economic downturn which followed the Financial crisis of 2007–2008, with output still below potential according to the CBO[337] and unemployment still above historic trends.[338] As of February 2013, the unemployment rate was 7.7% or 12.0 million people, while the government's broader U-6 unemployment rate, which includes the part-time underemployed was 14.3% or 22.2 million. With a record proportion of long term unemployed, continued decreasing household income, tax hikes, and new federal budget cuts, the US economy remained in a jobless recovery.[339][340] Half of the U.S. population lives in poverty or is low-income, according to U.S. census data.[341] According to a survey by the Associated Press, four out of five U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, near-poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives.[342]


The median US household income, 2001–2011.
While inflation-adjusted ("real") household income had been increasing almost every year from 1947 to 1999, it has since been flat and even decreased recently.[343] Extreme poverty in the United States, meaning households living on less than $2 per day before government benefits, doubled from 1996 levels to 1.5 million households in 2011, including 2.8 million children.[344] In 2011 16.7 million children lived in food insecure households, about 35% more than 2007 levels, though only 1.1% of US children, or 845,000, saw reduced food intake or disrupted eating patterns at some point during the year, and most cases weren't chronic.[345]
There were about 643,000 sheltered and unsheltered homeless persons in the U.S. in January 2009. Almost two-thirds stayed in an emergency shelter or transitional housing program and the other third were living on the street, in an abandoned building, or another place not meant for human habitation. About 1.56 million people, or about 0.5% of the U.S. population, used an emergency shelter or a transitional housing program between October 1, 2008 and September 30, 2009.[346] The U.S. welfare state is one of the least extensive in the developed world, reducing both relative poverty and absolute poverty by considerably less than the mean for rich nations,[347][348][349] though combined private and public social expenditures per capita are relatively high and Americans face much lower consumption taxes than poor Europeans.[350]
While the American welfare state effectively reduces poverty among the elderly,[351] it provides relatively little assistance to the young.[352] A 2007 UNICEF study of children's well-being in 21 industrialized nations, based on factors like income relative to each nation's own median, self-reported risky behavior, and family relationship quality, ranked the United States next to last.[353] After being higher in the postwar period, the US unemployment rate fell below the rising eurozone unemployment rate in the mid-1980s and has remained significantly lower almost continuously since.[354][355][356] From 1983-2008 US real compounded annual GDP growth was 3.3% compared to a 2.3% weighted average for the rest of the G7.[357] At the same time, unions are losing their strength in the United States, while they've retained more of their clout in Western Europe. Low-skilled immigrants to the U.S. have been competing for low wage jobs, which allows employers to keep a lid on wages.[358] The rise in the share of total annual income received by the top 1 percent, which has more than doubled from 9 percent in 1976 to 20 percent in 2011, has had a significant impact on income inequality,[359] leaving the United States with one of the widest income distributions among OECD nations,[347][360] though incomes have risen across the board in that time and individuals’ incomes have increased significantly with age.[357] The median American family had almost twice the purchasing power in 2011 that it did in 1960.[361][362] The post-recession income gains have been very uneven, with the top 1 percent capturing 95 percent of the income gains from 2009 to 2012.[363]
Poverty in the US has been increasing as median incomes have declined. Analyses using a common data set for comparisons tend to find that the US has a lower absolute poverty rate by market income than most other wealthy nations, although starting in the 1980s relative poverty rates have consistently exceeded those of other wealthy nations.[364] According to the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation, over 80% of poor American households have air conditioning, three quarters own at least one automobile, about 40% own their homes, and the average poor American has more living space than the general population average in every European nation except Luxembourg and Denmark. Most of them have a refrigerator, stove, microwave, telephone, and television. About half have computers and less than half have internet service.[336]


A middle-class suburban housing development in San Jose, California
Wealth, like income and taxes, is highly concentrated: The richest 10% of the adult population possesses 69.8% of the country's household wealth, the second-highest share among developed nations.[365] In 2013 the United Nations Development Programme ranked the United States 16th among 132 countries on its inequality-adjusted human development index (IHDI), 13 places lower than in the standard HDI.[366] For the year 2012, the United States ranks 12th on the Legatum Prosperity Index.[367]
Between June 2007 and November 2008 the global recession led to falling asset prices around the world. Assets owned by Americans lost about a quarter of their value.[368] Since peaking in the second quarter of 2007, household wealth is down $14 trillion.[369] At the end of 2008, household debt amounted to $13.8 trillion.[370] By some measures, the US has more millionaires per capita than any other nation, ranks in the top 14 in billionaires per capita,[371] and has more billionaires and millionaires than any other nation and all of Europe; most of them self-made.[372][373][374]
Infrastructure

Transportation
Main article: Transportation in the United States


The Interstate Highway System, which extends 46,876 miles (75,440 km)[375]
Personal transportation is dominated by automobiles, which operate on a network of 13 million roads, including one of the world's longest highway systems.[376] The world's second largest automobile market,[377] the United States has the highest rate of per-capita vehicle ownership in the world, with 765 vehicles per 1,000 Americans.[378] About 40% of personal vehicles are vans, SUVs, or light trucks.[379] The average American adult (accounting for all drivers and non-drivers) spends 55 minutes driving every day, traveling 29 miles (47 km).[380]
Mass transit accounts for 9% of total U.S. work trips.[381][382] While transport of goods by rail is extensive, relatively few people use rail to travel,[383] though ridership on Amtrak, the national intercity passenger rail system, grew by almost 37% between 2000 and 2010.[384] Also, light rail development has increased in recent years.[385] Bicycle usage for work commutes is minimal.[386]
The civil airline industry is entirely privately owned and has been largely deregulated since 1978, while most major airports are publicly owned. The three largest airlines in the world by passengers carried are U.S.-based; American Airlines is number one after its 2013 acquisition of US Airways.[387] Of the world's 30 busiest passenger airports, 16 are in the United States, including the busiest, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.[388]
Further information: List of airlines of the United States
Energy
See also: Energy policy of the United States
The United States energy market is 29,000 terawatt hours per year. Energy consumption per capita is 7.8 tons of oil equivalent per year, the 10th highest rate in the world. In 2005, 40% of this energy came from petroleum, 23% from coal, and 22% from natural gas. The remainder was supplied by nuclear power and renewable energy sources.[389] The United States is the world's largest consumer of petroleum.[390]
For decades, nuclear power has played a limited role relative to many other developed countries, in part because of public perception in the wake of a 1979 accident. In 2007, several applications for new nuclear plants were filed.[391] The United States has 27% of global coal reserves.[392] It is the world's largest producer of natural gas and crude oil.[393]
Science and technology

Main article: Science and technology in the United States
See also: Technological and industrial history of the United States


Neil Armstrong was the first person to walk on the Moon.
The United States has been a leader in scientific research and technological innovation since the late 19th century. In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell was awarded the first U.S. patent for the telephone. Thomas Edison's laboratory developed the phonograph, the first long-lasting light bulb, and the first viable movie camera.[394] 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.[395]
The rise of Nazism in the 1930s led many European scientists, including Albert Einstein, Enrico Fermi, and John von Neumann, to immigrate to the United States. During World War II, the Manhattan Project developed nuclear weapons, ushering in the Atomic Age. The Space Race produced rapid advances in rocketry, materials science, and computers. IBM, Apple Computer, and Microsoft refined and popularized the personal computer.
The United States largely developed the ARPANET and its successor, the Internet. Today, 64% of research and development funding comes from the private sector.[396] The United States leads the world in scientific research papers and impact factor.[397] As of April 2010, 77% of American households owned at least one computer, and 68% had broadband Internet service.[398] 85% of Americans also own a mobile phone as of 2011.[399] The country is the primary developer and grower of genetically modified food, representing half of the world's biotech crops.[400]
Education

Main article: Education in the United States
See also: Educational attainment in the United States and Higher education in the United States


Some 80% of U.S. college students attend public universities such as the University of Virginia, founded by Thomas Jefferson[401]
American public education is operated by state and local governments, 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 six or seven (generally, 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.[402] About 12% of children are enrolled in parochial or nonsectarian private schools. Just over 2% of children are homeschooled.[403]
The United States has many competitive private and public institutions of higher education. According to prominent international rankings, 13 or 15 American colleges and universities are ranked among the top 20 in the world.[404][405] There are also local community colleges with generally more open admission policies, shorter academic programs, and lower tuition. 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.[406] The basic literacy rate is approximately 99%.[4][407] The United Nations assigns the United States an Education Index of 0.97, tying it for 12th in the world.[408]
As of 2012, student loan debt exceeded one trillion dollars, more than Americans owe on credit cards.[409]
Health

See also: Health care in the United States, Health care reform in the United States, and Health insurance in the United States


The Texas Medical Center in Houston is the world's largest medical center.
The United States has life expectancy of 78.4 years at birth, up from 75.2 years in 1990, ranks it 50th among 221 nations, and 27th out of the 34 industrialized OECD countries, down from 20th in 1990.[410][411] Increasing obesity in the United States and health improvements elsewhere have contributed to lowering the country's rank in life expectancy from 1987, when it was 11th in the world.[412] Obesity rates in the United States are among the highest in the world.[413] Approximately one-third of the adult population is obese and an additional third is overweight;[414] the obesity rate, the highest in the industrialized world, has more than doubled in the last quarter-century.[415] Obesity-related type 2 diabetes is considered epidemic by health care professionals.[416] The infant mortality rate of 6.06 per thousand places the United States 176th highest out of 222 countries.[417]
In 2010, coronary artery disease, lung cancer, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases, and traffic accidents caused the most years of life lost in the US. Low back pain, depression, musculoskeletal disorders, neck pain, and anxiety caused the most years lost to disability. The most deleterious risk factors were poor diet, tobacco smoking, obesity, high blood pressure, high blood sugar, physical inactivity, and alcohol use. Alzheimer's disease, drug abuse, kidney disease and cancer, and falls caused the most additional years of life lost over their age-adjusted 1990 per-capita rates.[411]
US teenage pregnancy and abortion rates are substantially higher than in other western nations, particularly among blacks and Hispanics.[418] In 2010, the maternal mortality rate was 21 deaths/100,000 live births, the US occupying the 136th place among world countries (first place being the highest mortality rate - Chad in 2010). The maternal mortality rate in the US is higher than in most Western countries.[419] The US is one of just a few countries in the world without paid family leave as a legal right, with the others being Papua New Guinea, Suriname and Liberia.[420]
The U.S. is a global leader in medical innovation. America solely developed or contributed significantly to 9 of the top 10 most important medical innovations since 1975 as ranked by a 2001 poll of physicians, while the EU and Switzerland together contributed to five. Since 1966 Americans have received more Nobel Prizes in Medicine than the rest of the world combined. From 1989 to 2002 four times more money was invested in private biotechnology companies in America than in Europe.[421][422]
A comprehensive 2007 study by European doctors found the five-year cancer survival rate was significantly higher in the US than in all 21 European nations studied, 66.3% for men versus the European mean of 47.3% and 62.9% versus 52.8% for women.[423][424] Americans undergo cancer screenings at significantly higher rates than people in other developed countries, and access MRI and CT scans at the highest rate of any OECD nation.[425] People in the US diagnosed with high cholesterol or hypertension access pharmaceutical treatments at higher rates than those diagnosed in other developed nations, and are more likely to successfully control the conditions.[426][427] Diabetics are more likely to receive treatment and meet treatment targets in the US than in Canada, England, or Scotland.[428][429]
The U.S. health-care system far outspends any other nations, measured in both per capita spending and percentage of GDP.[430] In 2008, the US spent more on health care per capita ($7,146), and as percentage of GDP (15.2%), than any other nation. Health-care coverage in the United States is a combination of public and private efforts, and is not universal as in all other developed countries. In 2004, private insurance paid for 36% of personal health expenditures, private out-of-pocket payments covered 15%, and federal, state, and local governments paid for 44%.[431]
In 2010, 49.9 million residents or 16.3% of the population did not carry health insurance. The main cause of this rise is the drop in the number of Americans with employer-sponsored health insurance.[432] The subject of uninsured and underinsured Americans is a major political issue.[433][434] In 2006, Massachusetts became the first state to mandate universal health insurance.[435] In 2007, 62.1% of filers for bankruptcy blamed medical expenses. About 25% of all senior citizens declare bankruptcy because of medical expenses, and 43% are forced to mortgage or sell their primary residence.[436] Federal legislation passed in early 2010 would ostensibly create a near-universal health insurance system around the country by 2014, though the bill and its ultimate impact are issues of controversy.[437][438]
Culture

Main article: Culture of the United States
See also: Social class in the United States, Public holidays in the United States, and Tourism in the United States


The Statue of Liberty in New York City is a symbol of both the U.S. and ideals of freedom, democracy, and opportunity.[439]
The United States is a multicultural nation, home to a wide variety of ethnic groups, traditions, and values.[12][440] Aside from the relatively small Native American and Native Hawaiian populations, nearly all Americans or their ancestors settled or immigrated within the past five centuries.[441] 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.[12][442] More recent immigration from Asia and especially Latin America has added to a cultural mix that has been described as both a homogenizing melting pot, and a heterogeneous salad bowl in which immigrants and their descendants retain distinctive cultural characteristics.[12]
American culture is considered the most individualistic in the world.[443] The American Dream, or the perception that Americans enjoy high social mobility, plays a key role in attracting immigrants.[444] By some measures, social mobility is actually lower than other high-income countries such as France, Germany, Canada, Australia, and the Nordic countries,[445][444][446] which has been partly attributed to the depth of American poverty, which leaves poor children starting especially far behind.[447] It has been claimed that such studies are based on relative comparisons within each nation rather than absolute wealth earned throughout one's life, the US having both a more stretched-out income distribution and a higher median income than those nations.[361] While the mainstream culture holds that the United States is a classless society,[448] scholars identify significant differences between the country's social classes, affecting socialization, language, and values.[449]
The American middle and professional class has initiated many contemporary social trends such as modern feminism, environmentalism, and multiculturalism.[450] Americans' self-images, social viewpoints, and cultural expectations are associated with their occupations to an unusually close degree.[451] While Americans tend greatly to value socioeconomic achievement, being ordinary or average is generally seen as a positive attribute.[452]
Popular media
Main articles: Media of the United States, Cinema of the United States, Television in the United States, and Music of the United States


The Hollywood Sign in Los Angeles, California, a symbol of the American film industry
[clarification needed]
The world's first commercial motion picture exhibition was given in New York City in 1894, using Thomas Edison's Kinetoscope. The next year saw the first commercial screening of a projected film, also in New York, and the United States was in the forefront of sound film's development in the following decades. Since the early 20th century, the U.S. film industry has largely been based in and around Hollywood, California.
Director D. W. Griffith was central to the development of film grammar and Orson Welles's Citizen Kane (1941) is frequently cited as the greatest film of all time.[453][454] American screen actors like John Wayne and Marilyn Monroe have become iconic figures, while producer/entrepreneur Walt Disney was a leader in both animated film and movie merchandising. Hollywood is also one of the leaders in motion picture production.[455]
Americans are the heaviest television viewers in the world,[456] and the average viewing time continues to rise, reaching five hours a day in 2006.[457] The four major broadcast television networks are all commercial entities. Americans listen to radio programming, also largely commercialized, on average just over two-and-a-half hours a day.[458] Aside from web portals and search engines, the most popular websites are Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia, Blogger, eBay, and Craigslist.[459][clarification needed] The rhythmic and lyrical styles of African-American music have deeply influenced American music at large, distinguishing it from European traditions. Elements from folk idioms such as the blues and what is now 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.[460][clarification needed] Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry were among the mid-1950s pioneers of rock and roll. 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 and house music. American pop stars such as Presley, Michael Jackson, and Madonna have become global celebrities.[460]
Literature, philosophy, and the arts
Main articles: American literature, American philosophy, Visual art of the United States, and American classical music
In the 18th and early 19th centuries, American art and literature took most of its cues from Europe. Writers such as 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 now recognized as an essential American poet.[461] 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), and F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (1925)—may be dubbed the "Great American Novel".[462]


Mark Twain, famous American author and humorist.
Eleven U.S. citizens have won the Nobel Prize in Literature, most recently Toni Morrison in 1993. William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway are often named among the most influential writers of the 20th century.[463] 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.
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 led a revival of political philosophy. Cornel West and Judith Butler have led a continental tradition in American philosophical academia. Globally influential Chicago school economists like Milton Friedman, James M. Buchanan, and Thomas Sowell have transcended discipline to impact various fields in social and political philosophy.[464][465]
In the visual arts, the Hudson River School was a mid-19th-century movement in the tradition of European naturalism. The realist paintings of Thomas Eakins are now widely celebrated. The 1913 Armory Show in New York City, an exhibition of European modernist art, shocked the public and transformed the U.S. art scene.[466] 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.


Times Square in New York City, the hub of the Broadway Theater District.
One of the first major promoters of American theater was impresario P. T. Barnum, who began operating a lower Manhattan entertainment complex in 1841. The team of Harrigan and Hart produced a series of popular musical comedies in New York starting in the late 1870s. In the 20th century, the modern musical form emerged on Broadway; the songs of musical theater composers such as Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, and Stephen Sondheim have become pop standards. Playwright Eugene O'Neill won the Nobel literature prize in 1936; other acclaimed U.S. dramatists include multiple Pulitzer Prize winners Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, and August Wilson.
Though little known at the time, Charles Ives's 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 developed a new synthesis of popular and classical music. Choreographers Isadora Duncan and Martha Graham helped create modern dance, while George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins were leaders in 20th-century ballet. Americans have long been important in the modern artistic medium of photography, with major photographers including Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, and Ansel Adams. The newspaper comic strip and the comic book are both U.S. innovations. Superman, the quintessential comic book superhero, has become an American icon.[467]
Food
Main article: Cuisine of the United States


An apple pie, surrounded by some other icons of American culture.
Mainstream American cuisine is similar to that in other Western countries. Wheat is the primary cereal grain. Traditional American cuisine uses indigenous ingredients, such as turkey, venison, potatoes, sweet potatoes, corn, squash, and maple syrup, which were consumed by Native Americans and early European settlers.
Slow-cooked pork and beef barbecue, crab cakes, potato chips, and chocolate chip cookies are distinctively American foods. Soul food, developed by African slaves, is popular around the South and among many African Americans elsewhere. Syncretic cuisines such as Louisiana Creole, Cajun, and Tex-Mex are regionally important.
Characteristic dishes such as apple pie, fried chicken, pizza, hamburgers, and hot dogs derive from the recipes of various immigrants. French fries, Mexican dishes such as burritos and tacos, and pasta dishes freely adapted from Italian sources are widely consumed.[468] Americans generally prefer coffee to tea. Marketing by U.S. industries is largely responsible for making orange juice and milk ubiquitous breakfast beverages.[469][470]
The American fast food industry, the world's largest, pioneered the drive-through format in the 1930s. Fast food consumption has sparked health concerns. During the 1980s and 1990s, Americans' caloric intake rose 24%;[468] frequent dining at fast food outlets is associated with what public health officials call the American "obesity epidemic".[471] Highly sweetened soft drinks are widely popular, and sugared beverages account for nine percent of American caloric intake.[472]
Sports
Main article: Sports in the United States


Swimmer Michael Phelps is the most decorated Olympic athlete of all time.
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.[473] Baseball has been regarded as the national sport since the late 19th century, while American football is now by several measures the most popular spectator sport.[474] Basketball and ice hockey are the country's next two leading professional team sports. These four major sports, when played professionally, each occupy a season at different, but overlapping, times of the year. College football and basketball attract large audiences. Boxing and horse racing were once the most watched individual sports,[475] but they have been eclipsed by golf and auto racing, particularly NASCAR. In the 21st century, televised mixed martial arts has also gained a strong following of regular viewers.[476] While soccer is much less popular in the United States than in many other nations, it is played widely at the youth and amateur levels; even so, the men's team has been to the past six World Cups and the women are #1 in the women's world rankings. Tennis and many outdoor sports are popular as well.
While most major U.S. sports have evolved out of European practices, basketball, volleyball, skateboarding, snowboarding, and cheerleading are American inventions, which have become popular in other countries. Lacrosse and surfing arose from Native American and Native Hawaiian activities that predate Western contact. Eight Olympic Games have taken place in the United States. The United States has won 2,301 medals at the Summer Olympic Games, more than any other country,[477] and 253 in the Winter Olympic Games, the second most by 2006.[478]
See also

Portal icon United States portal
Index of United States-related articles
Outline of the United States
List of United States cities by population
List of metropolitan areas of the United States
List of official United States national symbols
Book icon United States at Wikipedia books
References

Jump up ^ 36 U.S.C. § 302 National motto
Jump up ^ Simonson, 2010
Jump up ^ Dept. of Treasury, 2011
^ Jump up to: a b c d "United States". The World Factbook. CIA. September 30, 2009. Retrieved January 5, 2010 (area given in square kilometers).
^ Jump up to: a b "U.S. POPClock Projection". U.S. Census Bureau. (figure updated automatically).
^ Jump up to: a b c d e f "United States". International Monetary Fund. Retrieved April 16, 2013.
Jump up ^ "Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2011". Newsroom. United States Census Bureau. September 12, 2012. Retrieved January 23, 2013.
Jump up ^ "Human Development Report 2013". United Nations Development Programme. March 14, 2013. Retrieved March 14, 2013.
^ Jump up to: a b Feder, Jody (January 25, 2007). "English as the Official Language of the United States: Legal Background and Analysis of Legislation in the 110th Congress". Ilw.com (Congressional Research Service). Retrieved June 19, 2007.
Jump up ^ The New York Times Guide to Essential Knowledge, Second Edition: A Desk Reference for the Curious Mind. St. Martin's Press. 2007. p. 632. ISBN 978-0312376598.
Jump up ^ Onuf, Peter S. (1983). The Origins of the Federal Republic: Jurisdictional Controversies in the United States, 1775–1787. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 978-0812211672.
^ Jump up to: a b c d Adams, J.Q.; Strother-Adams, Pearlie (2001). Dealing with Diversity. Chicago: Kendall/Hunt. ISBN 0-7872-8145-X.
Jump up ^ Greene, Jack P.; Pole, J.R., eds. (2008). A Companion to the American Revolution. pp. 352–361.
Jump up ^ Bender, Thomas (2006). A Nation Among Nations: America's Place in World History. New York: Hill & Wang. p. 61. ISBN 9780809072354.
^ Jump up to: 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 9781851098330.
Jump up ^ "The Civil War and emancipation 1861-1865". Africans in America. Boston, MA: WGBH. No date. Retrieved March 26, 2013.
Britannica Educational Publishing (2009). Wallenfeldt, Jeffrey H., ed. The American Civil War and Reconstruction: People, Politics, and Power. America at War. Rosen Publishing Group. p. 264. ISBN 9781615300457.
Jump up ^ White, Donald W. (1996). "1: The Frontiers". The American Century. Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-05721-0. Retrieved March 26, 2013.
Jump up ^ Maddison, Angus (2006). "Historical Statistics for the World Economy". The Netherlands: The Groningen Growth and Development Centre, Economics Department of the University of Groningen. Retrieved November 6, 2008.
^ Jump up to: a b c d "World Economic Outlook Database". International Monetary Fund. September 2011. Retrieved September 11, 2011.
Jump up ^ The European Union has a larger collective economy, but is not a single nation.
Jump up ^ "Crisis squeezes income and puts pressure on inequality and poverty". OECD (2013). Retrieved 26 July 2013.
Jump up ^ [1][dead link]
Jump up ^ "U.S. Workers World's Most Productive". CBS News. February 11, 2009. Retrieved April 23, 2013.
Jump up ^ "Manufacturing, Jobs and the U.S. Economy". Alliance for American Manufacturing. 2013.
Jump up ^ "Trends in world military expenditure, 2012". Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. April 2013. Retrieved April 15, 2013.
Jump up ^ Cohen, 2004:History and the Hyperpower
Jump up ^ BBC, April 2008:Country Profile: United States of America
Jump up ^ "Cartographer Put 'America' on the Map 500 years Ago". USA Today (Washington, D.C.). Associated Press. April 24, 2007. Retrieved November 30, 2008.
Jump up ^ 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. A new find suggests the man might have been George Washington himself." Christian Science Monitor (Boston, MA).
Jump up ^ "To the inhabitants of Virginia," by A PLANTER. Dixon and Hunter's Virginia Gazette #1287 – April 6, 1776, Williamsburg, Virginia. Letter is also included in Peter Force's American Archives Vol. 5
Jump up ^ Carter, Rusty (August 18, 2012). "You read it here first"[dead link]. Virginia Gazette. "He did a search of the archives and found the letter on the front page of the April 6, 1776, edition, published by Hunter & Dixon."
Jump up ^ DeLear, Byron (August 16, 2012). "Who coined the name 'United States of America'? Mystery gets new twist." Christian Science Monitor (Boston, MA).
Jump up ^ Jefferson's "original Rough draught" of the Declaration of Independence
Jump up ^ "The Charters of Freedom". National Archives. Retrieved June 20, 2007.
Jump up ^ Mary Mostert (2005). The Threat of Anarchy Leads to the Constitution of the United States. CTR Publishing, Inc. p. 18. ISBN 9780975385142.
Jump up ^ "Get to Know D.C.". Historical Society of Washington, D.C. Retrieved July 11, 2011.
Jump up ^ Wilson, Kenneth G. (1993). The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 27–28. ISBN 0-231-06989-8.
Jump up ^ Zimmer, Benjamin (November 24, 2005). "Life in These, Uh, This United States". University of Pennsylvania—Language Log. Retrieved January 5, 2013.
Jump up ^ G. H. Emerson, The Universalist Quarterly and General Review, Vol. 28 (Jan. 1891), p. 49, quoted in Zimmer paper above.
Jump up ^ For example, the U.S. embassy in Spain calls itself the embassy of the "Estados Unidos", literally the words "states" and "united", and also uses the initials "EE.UU.", the doubled letters implying plural use in Spanish [2] Elsewhere on the site "Estados Unidos de América" is used [3]
Jump up ^ Smithsonian, 2004, Human Origins
Jump up ^ "The Cambridge encyclopedia of human paleopathology". Arthur C. Aufderheide, Conrado Rodríguez-Martín, Odin Langsjoen (1998). Cambridge University Press. p.205. ISBN 0-521-55203-6
Jump up ^ Bianchine, Russo, 1992 pp.225-232
Jump up ^ Mann, 2005 p.44
Jump up ^ Thornton, 1987 p.49
Jump up ^ Kessel, 2005 pp.142-143
Jump up ^ Mercer Country Historical Society, 2005
Jump up ^ Juergens, 2011, p.69
Jump up ^ Ripper, 2008 p.6
Jump up ^ Ripper, 2008 p.5
Jump up ^ Calloway, 1998, p.55
Jump up ^ Vaughan, 1999, p.12
Jump up ^ Ranlet, 1999, pp.140-141
Jump up ^ Ranlet, 1999, p.137
^ Jump up to: a b Rausch, 1994, p.59
Jump up ^ Sturm, Circe. "Blood Politics, Racial Classification, and Cherokee National Identity: The Trials and Tribulations of the Cherokee Freedmen", American Indian Quarterly, Vol. 22, No. 1/2. (Winter – Spring, 1998), p.231.
Jump up ^ Taylor, pp. 33-34
Jump up ^ Taylor, pp. 72, 74
Jump up ^ Walton, 2009, pp. 29-31
Jump up ^ Remini, 2007, pp. 2,3,
Jump up ^ Johnson, 1997, pp. 26-30
Jump up ^ Berkin, 2007, p. 75
Jump up ^ Price, 2003
Jump up ^ Vaughan, 1999
Jump up ^ Walton, 2009, chapter 3
Jump up ^ Lemon, 1987
Jump up ^ Gordon, 2004, intro, chapters 1 and 2
Jump up ^ Russell, David Lee (2005). The American Revolution in the Southern Colonies. Jefferson, N.C., and London: McFarland, p. 12. ISBN 0-7864-0783-2.
Jump up ^ Clingan, 2000, p.13
Jump up ^ Tadman, 2000, p.1534
Jump up ^ Schneider, 2007, p.484
Jump up ^ Lien, 1913, p.522
Jump up ^ Davis, 1996, p.7
Jump up ^ Quirk, 2011, p.195
Jump up ^ Gold, 2006, pp.32-35
Jump up ^ 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.
Jump up ^ Wood, Gordon S. (1998). The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787. UNC Press Books. p. 263. ISBN 978-0-8078-4723-7.
Jump up ^ Walton, 2009, pp. 38,39
Jump up ^ Walton, 2009, p. 35
Jump up ^ 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.
Jump up ^ Brown, Jerold E. (2001). Historical Dictionary of the U.S. Army. Greenwood Publishing. p. 126. ISBN 978-0-313-29322-1.
Jump up ^ 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.
Jump up ^ Greene and Pole, A Companion to the American Revolution p 357
Jonathan R. Dull, A Diplomatic History of the American Revolution (1987) p. 161
Lawrence S. Kaplan, "The Treaty of Paris, 1783: A Historiographical Challenge," International History Review, Sept 1983, Vol. 5 Issue 3, pp 431–442
Jump up ^ Boyer, 2007, pp.192-193
Jump up ^ Cogliano, Francis D. (2008). Thomas Jefferson: Reputation and Legacy. University of Virginia Press. p. 219. ISBN 978-0-8139-2733-6.
Jump up ^ Walton, 2009, p. 43
Jump up ^ Gordon, 2004, pp. 27,29
Jump up ^ Hall, Kermit (2002). The Oxford Companion to American Law. Oxford University Press. p. 26. ISBN 978-0-19-508878-6.
Jump up ^ 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.
Jump up ^ Billington, Ray Allen; Ridge, Martin (2001). Westward Expansion: A History of the American Frontier. UNM Press. p. 22. ISBN 978-0-8263-1981-4.
Jump up ^ "Louisiana Purchase". National Parks Services. Retrieved March 1, 2011.
Jump up ^ Wait, Eugene M. (1999). America and the War of 1812. Nova Publishers. p. 78. ISBN 978-1-56072-644-9.
Jump up ^ Klose, Nelson; Jones, Robert F. (1994). United States History to 1877. Barron's Educational Series. p. 150. ISBN 978-0-8120-1834-9.
Jump up ^ Morrison, Michael A. (1999). 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.
Jump up ^ Kemp, Roger L. (2010). Documents of American Democracy: A Collection of Essential Works. McFarland. p. 180. ISBN 978-0-7864-4210-2.
Jump up ^ 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.
Jump up ^ Smith-Baranzini, Marlene (1999). A Golden State: Mining and Economic Development in Gold Rush California. University of California Press. p. 20. ISBN 978-0-520-21771-3.
Jump up ^ 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.
^ Jump up to: a b Wishart, David J. (2004). Encyclopedia of the Great Plains. University of Nebraska Press. p. 37. ISBN 978-0-8032-4787-1.
Jump up ^ Smith (2001), Grant, pp. 525–526
^ Jump up to: a b Carlisle (2008), The Civil War and Reconstruction, p. 1
Jump up ^ Stuart Murray (2004). Atlas of American Military History. Infobase Publishing. p. 76. ISBN 978-1-4381-3025-5.
Jump up ^ Thomas F. McIlwraith; Edward K. Muller (2001). North America: The Historical Geography of a Changing Continent. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 186. ISBN 978-0-7425-0019-8.
^ Jump up to: a b Patrick Karl O'Brien (2002). Atlas of World History. Oxford University Press. p. 184. ISBN 978-0-19-521921-0.
Jump up ^ "1860 Census". U.S. Census Bureau. Retrieved June 10, 2007. Page 7 lists a total slave population of 3,953,760.
Jump up ^ De Rosa, Marshall L. (1997). The Politics of Dissolution: The Quest for a National Identity and the American Civil War. Edison, NJ: Transaction. p. 266. ISBN 1-56000-349-9.
Jump up ^ Vinovskis, Maris (1990). "Toward a social history of the American Civil War: exploratory essays". Cambridge University Press. p. 6. ISBN 0-521-39559-3.
^ Jump up to: a b G. Alan Tarr (2009). Judicial Process and Judicial Policymaking. Cengage Learning. p. 30. ISBN 978-0-495-56736-3.
Jump up ^ Brands (2012), Grant Takes On The Klan, American History, p. 46[unreliable source?]
Jump up ^ John Powell (2009). Encyclopedia of North American Immigration. Infobase Publishing. p. 74. ISBN 978-1-4381-1012-7.
Jump up ^ Rong, Xue Lan; Preissle, Judith (2009). Educating Immigrant Students in the 21st Century: What Educators Need to Know. Corwin Press. pp. 127–128. ISBN 9781412940955.
Jump up ^ Gates, John M. (August 1984). "War-Related Deaths in the Philippines". Pacific Historical Review. College of Wooster. Retrieved September 27, 2007.
Jump up ^ Zinn, Howard. A People's History of the United States. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2005. Chapter 13, "The Socialist Challange" pp. 321-357 ISBN 0060838655
Jump up ^ Zinn, Howard. A People's History of the United States. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2005. p. 327 ISBN 0060838655
Jump up ^ Foner, Eric; Garraty, John A. (1991). The Reader's Companion to American History. New York: Houghton Mifflin. p. 576. ISBN 0-395-51372-3.
^ Jump up to: a b McDuffie, Jerome; Piggrem, Gary Wayne; Woodworth, Steven E. (2005). U.S. History Super Review. Piscataway, NJ: Research & Education Association. p. 418. ISBN 0-7386-0070-9.
Jump up ^ Voris, Jacqueline Van (1996). Carrie Chapman Catt: A Public Life. Women and Peace Series. New York City: Feminist Press at CUNY. p. vii. ISBN 1558611398. "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."
Jump up ^ 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.
Jump up ^ Burton, Jeffrey F., et al. (July 2000). "A Brief History of Japanese American Relocation During World War II". Confinement and Ethnicity: An Overview of World War II Japanese American Relocation Sites. National Park Service. Retrieved April 2, 2010.
Jump up ^ See, for example, the aircraft production figures cited in Tooze 2006: in 1940, the Americans produced 6,019 aircraft; in 1941, 19,433; in 1942, almost 48,000; in 1943, an astonishing 85,898. Even more were to come in 1944. For comparison, in 1941, the German war economy could only manage about 12,000 aircraft.
Jump up ^ Leland, Anne; Oboroceanu, Mari–Jana (February 26, 2010). "American War and Military Operations Casualties: Lists and Statistics". Congressional Research Service. Retrieved February 18, 2011. p. 2.
Jump up ^ Kennedy, Paul (1989). The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. New York: Vintage. p. 358. ISBN 0-679-72019-7.
Indeed, World War II ushered in the zenith of US power in what came to be called the American Century, as Leffler 2010, p. 67, indicates: "Truman presided over the greatest military and economic power the world had ever known. War production had lifted the United States out of the Great Depression and had inaugurated an era of unimagined prosperity. Gross national product increased by 60 percent during the war, total earnings by 50 percent. Despite social unrest, labor agitation, racial conflict, and teenage vandalism, Americans had more discretionary income than ever before. Simultaneously, the US government had built up the greatest war machine in human history. By the end of 1942, the United States was producing more arms than all the Axis states combined, and, in 1943, it made almost three times more armaments than did the Soviet Union. In 1945, the United States had two-thirds of the world's gold reserves, three-fourths of its invested capital, half of its shipping vessels, and half of its manufacturing capacity. Its GNP was three times that of the Soviet Union and more than five times that of Britain. It was also nearing completion of the atomic bomb, a technological and production feat of huge costs and proportions."
Jump up ^ "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. Archived from the original on June 12, 2007. Retrieved June 11, 2007.
Jump up ^ Pacific War Research Society (2006). Japan's Longest Day. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 4-7700-2887-3.
Jump up ^ Gladchuk, John Joseph (2006). Hollywood and Anticommunism: HUAC and the Evolution of the Red Menace, 1935–1950. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-95568-8.
Jump up ^ Collins, Michael (1988). Liftoff: The Story of America's Adventure in Space. New York: Grove Press.
Jump up ^ Stern, Sheldon M (2003). Averting the Final Failure: John F. Kennedy and the Secret Cuban Missile Crisis Meetings. Stanford Nuclear Age Series. Stanford University Press.
Jump up ^ 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. Retrieved January 1, 2012.
Jump up ^ Social Security History, the United States Social Security Administration
Jump up ^ Soss, 2010, p.277
Jump up ^ Fraser, 1989
Jump up ^ Ferguson, 1986, pp.43-53
Jump up ^ Williams, pp.325–331
Jump up ^ Cronkite, Walter; Wagner, Heather Lehr (2009). Ronald Reagan. Great American Presidents Series. Infobase Publishing. p. 102. ISBN 9781438103082.
D'Souza, Dinesh (1999). Ronald Reagan: How an Ordinary Man Became an Extraordinary Leader. Simon and Schuster. p. 304. ISBN 9780684848235.
Niskanen, William A. (1988). Reaganomics: an insider's account of the policies and the people. Oxford University Press. p. 363. ISBN 9780195053944.
Jump up ^ "General Article: The Iran-Contra Affair". American Experience. WGBH Educational Foundation. Retrieved March 11, 2013.
"Ronald Reagan". Your Presidents. White House. Retrieved March 11, 2013.
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 9780549416586.
Kissinger, Henry (2011). Diplomacy. Simon and Schuster. pp. 781–784. ISBN 9781439126318.
Mann, James (2009). The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan: A History of the End of the Cold War. Penguin. p. 432. ISBN 9781440686399.
Jump up ^ Hayes, 2009
Jump up ^ US History.org, 2013
Jump up ^ Burns, 2008
Jump up ^ Levy, 1996, p.442
Jump up ^ Wallander, 2003
Jump up ^ Lee Banville. "Intervention In Iraq?". PBS NewsHour. MacNeil/Lehrer Productions. Retrieved March 6, 2013.
"Rebuilding Iraq". Student Activites. Scholastic Inc. Retrieved March 6, 2013.
"20 years after, Bush defends Gulf War as 'moral'". NBC News. Associated Press. January 20, 2011. Retrieved March 6, 2013.
Alan Greenblatt (February 24, 2011). "Twenty Years Later, First Iraq War Still Resonates". NPR. Retrieved March 6, 2013.
Jump up ^ Voyce, Bill (August 21, 2006). "Why the Expansion of the 1990s Lasted So Long". Iowa Workforce Information Network. Retrieved August 16, 2007.
Reginald Dale (February 18, 2000). "Did Clinton Do It, or Was He Lucky?". New York Times. Retrieved March 6, 2013.
Mankiw, N. Gregory (2008). Macroeconomics. Cengage Learning. p. 559. ISBN 9780324589993.
Jump up ^ 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. Retrieved March 6, 2013.
"Day of Terror Video Archive". Cable News Network LP, LLLP. (Time Warner Company). 2005. Retrieved March 6, 2013.
Jump up ^ Kenneth T. Walsh (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.
Ambassador Richard N. Haass (October 15, 2001). "The Bush Administration's Response to September 11th—and Beyond". Terrorism. Council on Foreign Relations. Retrieved March 6, 2013.
Atkins, Stephen E. (2011). The 9/11 Encyclopedia: Second Edition. ABC-CLIO. p. 872. ISBN 9781598849219.
Jump up ^ Bowden, Mark (2012). The Finish: The Killing of Osama Bin Laden. Grove Press. p. 304. ISBN 9780802194107.
"Kill/Capture". Frontline. WGBH Educational Foundation. May 10, 2011. Retrieved March 7, 2013.
Adrian Brown (September 10, 2012). "Osama Bin Laden's death: How it happened". BBC News. Retrieved March 7, 2013.
Jump up ^ Michael Smith (November 14, 2001). "Switch to guerrilla warfare". The Telegraph. Retrieved March 6, 2013.
Tucker, Spencer (2009). United States Leadership in Wartime. ABC-CLIO. p. 952. ISBN 9781598841725.
Jump up ^ "Many Europeans Oppose War in Iraq". USA Today. February 14, 2003. Retrieved September 1, 2008.
"Most Americans Support War with Iraq, Shows New Pew/CFR Poll – Commentary by Lee Feinstein". Council on Foreign Affairs. October 10, 2002. Retrieved March 7, 2013.
Jump up ^ Wong, Edward (February 15, 2008). "Overview: The Iraq War". New York Times. Retrieved March 7, 2013.
"The Invasion of Iraq". Frontline. WGBH educational foundation. February 26, 2004. 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 9780742549562.
Jump up ^ Jessica Durando; Shannon Rae Green (December 21, 2011). "Timeline: Key moments in the Iraq War". USA Today. Associated Press. Retrieved March 7, 2013.
"Last American Troops Leave Iraq Marking End of War". Fox News. Associated Press. December 18, 2011. Retrieved March 7, 2013.
Jump up ^ Kim Ann Zimmermann (August 20, 2012). "Hurricane Katrina: Facts, Damage & Aftermath". Live Science. TechMediaNetwork. Retrieved March 7, 2013.
Doomed New Orleans: Hurricane Katrina. National Geographic. 2012. Retrieved March 7, 2013.
"Hurricane Katrina". National Climatic Data Center. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. December 29, 2005. Retrieved March 7, 2013.
Brinkley, Douglas (768). The Great Deluge. HarperCollins. p. 768. ISBN 9780061744730.
Jump up ^ Jesse Washington; Chris Rugaber (September 9, 2011). "African-American Economic Gains Reversed By Great Recession". Huffington Post. Associated Press. Retrieved March 7, 2013.
Steve Hargreaves (November 5, 2008). "Obama rides economy to White House". CNN. Retrieved March 7, 2013.
One Year In, a Closer Look at the Obama Presidency. MacNeil/Lehrer Production. 2010. Retrieved March 7, 2012.
Jump up ^ Lubowski, Ruben; Vesterby, Marlow; Bucholtz, Shawn (July 21, 2006). "AREI Chapter 1.1: Land Use". Economic Research Service. Retrieved March 9, 2009.
Jump up ^ "United States". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved March 25, 2008 (area given in square miles).
Jump up ^ "Population by Sex, Rate of Population Increase, Surface Area and Density". Demographic Yearbook 2005. UN Statistics Division. Retrieved March 25, 2008 (area given in square kilometers).
Jump up ^ "World Factbook: Area Country Comparison Table". Yahoo Education. Retrieved February 28, 2007.
Jump up ^ O'Hanlon, Larry. "Supervolcano: What's Under Yellowstone?". Discovery Channel. Archived from the original on 2012-05-25. Retrieved June 13, 2007.
Jump up ^ Perkins, Sid (May 11, 2002). "Tornado Alley, USA". Science News. Archived from the original on July 1, 2007. Retrieved September 20, 2006.
Jump up ^ Morin, Nancy. "Vascular Plants of the United States". Plants. National Biological Service. Retrieved October 27, 2008.
Jump up ^ "Global Significance of Selected U.S. Native Plant and Animal Species". SDI Group. February 9, 2001. Retrieved January 20, 2009.
Jump up ^ "Numbers of Insects (Species and Individuals)". Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved January 20, 2009.
Jump up ^ "National Park Service Announces Addition of Two New Units" (Press release). National Park Service. February 28, 2006. Retrieved June 13, 2006.
^ Jump up to: a b "Federal Land and Buildings Ownership". Republican Study Committee. May 19, 2005. Retrieved March 9, 2009.
Jump up ^ "NOAA: Gulf of Mexico 'Dead Zone' Predictions Feature Uncertainty". U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). June 21, 2012. Retrieved June 23, 2012.
Jump up ^ "What is hypoxia?". Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium (LUMCON). Retrieved May 18, 2013.
Jump up ^ Daynes & Sussman, 2010, pp.3, 72, 74-76, 78
Jump up ^ Hays, Samuel P. (2000). A History of Environmental Politics since 1945.
Jump up ^ Rothman, Hal K. (1998).The Greening of a Nation? Environmentalism in the United States since 1945
Jump up ^ Turner, James Morton (2012). The Promise of Wilderness
^ Jump up to: a b "2010 Census Data". U.S. Census Bureau. Retrieved March 29, 2011.
Jump up ^ http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-02.pdf
Jump up ^ Camarota, Steven A.; Jensenius, Karen (July 2008). "Homeward Bound: Recent Immigration Enforcement and the Decline in the Illegal Alien Population". Center for Immigration Studies. Retrieved August 6, 2008.
Jump up ^ "Statistical Abstract of the United States". United States Census Bureau. 2005.
Jump up ^ "Executive Summary: A Population Perspective of the United States". Population Resource Center. May 2000. Archived from the original on June 4, 2007. Retrieved December 20, 2007.
Jump up ^ "Births: Preliminary Data for 2010". National Vital Statistics Reports, Volume 60. National Center for Health Statistics. 2011. Retrieved August 17, 2012.
Jump up ^ "U.S. Legal Permanent Residents: 2012". Office of Immigration Statistics Annual Flow Report.
Jump up ^ "Yearbook of Immigration Statistics: 2011 – Persons Obtaining Legal Permanent Resident Status by Region and Country of Birth: Fiscal Years 2002 to 2011 (Table 3)". U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security. Retrieved February 4, 2013.
Jump up ^ "Yearbook of Immigration Statistics: 2007 – Persons Obtaining Legal Permanent Resident Status by Region and Country of Birth: Fiscal Years 1998 to 2007 (Table 3)". U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security. Retrieved February 4, 2013.
Jump up ^ Donaldson James, Susan (April 8, 2011). "Gay Americans Make Up 4 Percent of Population". ABC News. Retrieved August 26, 2012.
Jump up ^ National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior. Retrieved January 6, 2013.
^ Jump up to: a b c d "Ancestry 2000". U.S.Census Bureau. June 2004. Retrieved June 13, 2007.
^ Jump up to: a b c Humes, Karen R.; Jones, Nicholas A.; Ramirez, Roberto R. (March 2011). "Overview of Race and Hispanic Origin: 2010". U.S. Census Bureau. Retrieved March 29, 2011.
Jump up ^ "B03001. Hispanic or Latino Origin by Specific Origin". 2007 American Community Survey. U.S. Census Bureau. Retrieved September 26, 2008.
Jump up ^ "Tables 41 and 42—Native and Foreign-Born Populations". Statistical Abstract of the United States 2009. U.S. Census Bureau. Retrieved October 11, 2009.
^ Jump up to: a b "National Vital Stattistics Reports: Volume 61, Number 1. Births: Final Data for 2012". Cdc.gov. August 2012. Retrieved November 25, 2012.
Jump up ^ U.S. Census Bureau: "U.S. Census Bureau Delivers Final State 2010 Census Population Totals for Legislative Redistricting" see custom table, 2nd worksheet
Jump up ^ Exner, Rich (July 3, 2012). "Americans under age one now mostly minorities, but not in Ohio: Statistical Snapshot". The Plain Dealer (Cleveland, OH). Retrieved July 29, 2012.
Jump up ^ "An Older and More Diverse Nation by Midcentury" (Press release). U.S. Census Bureau. August 14, 2008. Retrieved March 29, 2013.
Jump up ^ "United States—Urban/Rural and Inside/Outside Metropolitan Area (GCT-P1. Population, Housing Units, Area, and Density: 2000)". U.S. Census Bureau. April 1, 2000. Retrieved September 23, 2008.
Jump up ^ "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". 2008 Population Estimates. U.S. Census Bureau, Population Division. July 1, 2009. Archived from the original on December 7, 2009.
^ Jump up to: a b "Table 5. Estimates of Population Change for Metropolitan Statistical Areas and Rankings: July 1, 2007 to July 1, 2008". 2008 Population Estimates. U.S. Census Bureau. March 19, 2009. Archived from the original on December 7, 2009.
Jump up ^ "Raleigh and Austin are Fastest-Growing Metro Areas". U.S. Census Bureau. March 19, 2009. Retrieved October 11, 2009.
Jump up ^ "Figure A–3. Census Regions, Census Divisions, and Their Constituent States" (PDF). U.S. Census Bureau. Retrieved 2007-06-17.
Jump up ^ "Annual Estimates of the Population of Metropolitan and Micropolitan Statistical Areas: April 1, 2010 to July 1, 2011". U.S. Census Bureau. Retrieved 2012-06-07.
Jump up ^ "United States". Modern Language Association. Retrieved September 2, 2013.
Jump up ^ "Language Spoken at Home by the U.S. Population, 2010", American Community Survey, U.S. Census Bureau, in World Almanac and Book of Facts 2012, p. 615.
Jump up ^ "Foreign Language Enrollments in United States Institutions of Higher Learning". MLA. fall 2002. Retrieved October 16, 2006.
Jump up ^ "The Constitution of the State of Hawaii, Article XV, Section 4". Hawaii Legislative Reference Bureau. November 7, 1978. Retrieved June 19, 2007.
Jump up ^ Dicker, Susan J. (2003). Languages in America: A Pluralist View. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. pp. 216, 220–25. ISBN 1-85359-651-5.
Jump up ^ "California Code of Civil Procedure, Section 412.20(6)". Legislative Counsel, State of California. Retrieved December 17, 2007. "California Judicial Council Forms". Judicial Council, State of California. Retrieved December 17, 2007.
Jump up ^ "Among Wealthy Nations...U.S. Stands Alone in its Embrace of Religion". Pew Global Attitudes Project. Pew Research Center. December 19, 2002. Retrieved October 23, 2008.
^ Jump up to: a b http://www.gallup.com/poll/125999/mississippians-go-church-most-vermonters-least.aspx
^ Jump up to: a b c d "Religious Composition of the U.S.". U.S. Religious Landscape Survey. Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. 2007. Retrieved October 23, 2008.
^ Jump up to: a b c Kosmin, Barry A., Egon Mayer, and Ariela Kaysar (December 19, 2001). "American Religious Identification Survey 2001". CUNY Graduate Center. Retrieved September 16, 2011.
Jump up ^ "United States". Retrieved May 2, 2013.
Jump up ^ Media, Minorities, and Meaning: A Critical Introduction — Page 88, Debra L. Merskin – 2010
Jump up ^ Merica, Dan (June 12, 2012). "Pew Survey: Doubt of God Growing Quickly among Millennials". CNN. Retrieved June 14, 2012.
Jump up ^ "American Confidence In Organized Religion At All Time Low". Huffington Post. July 12, 2012. Retrieved July 14, 2012.
Jump up ^ "Religion Among the Millenials". The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. Retrieved August 29, 2012.
Jump up ^ "Table 55—Marital Status of the Population by Sex, Race, and Hispanic Origin: 1990 to 2007". Statistical Abstract of the United States 2009. U.S. Census Bureau. Retrieved October 11, 2009.
Jump up ^ "Women's Advances in Education". Columbia University, Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy. 2006. Archived from the original on June 9, 2007. Retrieved June 6, 2007.
Jump up ^ "Teenage birth rate statistics – countries compared – NationMaster People". Nationmaster.com. Retrieved July 10, 2011.
Jump up ^ "U.S. teen birth rates fall to historic lows". CBS News. April 10, 2012. Retrieved July 4, 2013.
Jump up ^ Strauss, Lilo T., et al. (November 24, 2006). "Abortion Surveillance—United States, 2003". MMWR. Centers for Disease Control, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Division of Reproductive Health. Retrieved June 17, 2007.
Jump up ^ http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/births.htm
Jump up ^ https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2127rank.html
Jump up ^ Jardine, Cassandra (31 Oct 2007). "Why adoption is so easy in America". Telegraph.
Jump up ^ http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/publications/pdf/policy/child-adoption.pdf
Jump up ^ Scheb, John M., and John M. Scheb II (2002). An Introduction to the American Legal System. Florence, KY: Delmar, p. 6. ISBN 0-7668-2759-3.
Jump up ^ Killian, Johnny H. "Constitution of the United States". The Office of the Secretary of the Senate. Retrieved February 11, 2012.
Jump up ^ "The Legislative Branch". United States Diplomatic Mission to Germany. Retrieved August 20, 2012.
Jump up ^ "The Process for impeachment". ThinkQuest. Retrieved August 20, 2012.
Jump up ^ "The Executive Branch". The White House. Retrieved August 20, 2012.
Jump up ^ Matt Bloch, Matthew Ericson, Kevin Quealy (May 30, 2013). "Census 2010: Gains and Losses in Congress". New York Times.
Jump up ^ "What is the Electoral College". National Archives. Retrieved August 21, 2012.
Jump up ^ Cossack, Roger (July 12, 2000). "Beyond politics: Why Supreme Court justices are appointed for life". CNN. Retrieved August 21, 2012.
Jump up ^ "Nebraska (state, United States) : Agriculture". Britannica Online Encyclopedia. Retrieved November 11, 2012.
Jump up ^ Feldstein, Fabozzi, 2011, p.9
Jump up ^ Schultz, 2009, pp.164, 453, 503
Jump up ^ Schultz, 2009, p.38
Jump up ^ Kavitha A. Davidson (21 March 2013). Democracy Index 2013: Global Democracy At A Standstill, The Economist Intelligence Unit's Annual Report Shows. The Huffington Post. Retrieved 23 August 2013.
Jump up ^ "Corruption Perceptions Index 2012". Transparency International. Retrieved February 4, 2013.
Jump up ^ Borreca, Richard (October 18, 1999). "'The Goal Was Democracy for All". Honolulu Star-Bulletin. Retrieved February 11, 2012.
Jump up ^ See 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
Jump up ^ Jenkins, William O. (2009). American Samoa: Issues Associated with Potential Changes to the Current System for Adjudicating Matters of Federal Law. DIANE Publishing. p. 8. ISBN 9781437907049.
Jump up ^ US General Accounting Office, U.S. Insular Areas. Application of the U.S. Constitution. November 1997. p. 9. Appendix I, p. 23-38. Retrieved April 29, 2013.
Jump up ^ Fonseca, Felicia (July 17, 2010). "Native American nations debate sovereignty after Iroquois passport dispute". Deseret News (Salt Lake City). Associated Press. Retrieved July 28, 2012.
Jump up ^ Etheridge, Eric; Deleith, Asger (August 19, 2009). "A Republic or a Democracy?". New York Times blogs. Retrieved November 7, 2010. "The US system seems essentially a two-party system. ..."
Jump up ^ Grigsby, Ellen (2008). Analyzing Politics: An Introduction to Political Science. Cengage Learning. pp. 106–7. ISBN 0-495-50112-3.
Jump up ^ "Congressional Profile Resources". Office of the Clerk of the United States House of Representatives.
Jump up ^ "50 State Governors". netstate.com. Retrieved February 27, 2013.
Jump up ^ "CHART: No more WASPs in Presidential Races". US News and World Reports. Retrieved August 3, 2013.
Jump up ^ Knickerbocker, Brad (August 19, 2012). "US government and politics no longer run by WASPs. Does it matter?". DC Decoder (blog) (Boston MA: The Christian Science Monitor). Retrieved December 27, 2012.
Jump up ^ "For the first time, no WASPs in election". NPR. August 19, 2012. Retrieved August 3, 2013.
Jump up ^ "What is the G8?". University of Toronto. Retrieved February 11, 2012.
Jump up ^ Chapman, James (May 26, 2011). "Brotherhood of the Burger Kings: Obama and Cameron Hail 'Stronger than Ever' Special Relationship". Daily Mail (London). Retrieved August 28, 2011.
Jump up ^ Ek, Carl, and Ian F. Fergusson (September 3, 2010). "Canada–U.S. Relations". Congressional Research Service. Retrieved August 28, 2011.
Jump up ^ Vaughn, Bruce (August 8, 2008). "Australia: Background and U.S. Relations". Congressional Research Service. Retrieved August 28, 2011.
Jump up ^ Vaughn, Bruce (May 27, 2011). "New Zealand: Background and Bilateral Relations with the United States". Congressional Research Service. Retrieved August 28, 2011.
Jump up ^ Lum, Thomas (January 3, 2011). "The Republic of the Philippines and U.S. Interests". Congressional Research Service. Retrieved August 3, 2011.
Jump up ^ Chanlett-Avery, Emma, et al. (June 8, 2011). "Japan-U.S. Relations: Issues for Congress" (PDF). Congressional Research Service. Retrieved August 28, 2011.
Jump up ^ Manyin, Mark E., Emma Chanlett-Avery, and Mary Beth Nikitin (July 8, 2011). "U.S.–South Korea Relations: Issues for Congress". Congressional Research Service. Retrieved August 28, 2011.
Jump up ^ Addis, Casey L. (February 14, 2011). "Israel: Background and U.S. Relations". Congressional Research Service. Retrieved August 28, 2011.
Jump up ^ Shah, Anup (April 13, 2009). "U.S. and Foreign Aid Assistance". GlobalIssues.org. Retrieved October 11, 2009.
Jump up ^ 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."
^ Jump up to: a b "CBO Historical Tables-February 2013". Cbo.gov. February 5, 2013. Retrieved April 23, 2013.
Jump up ^ Prasad, M.; Deng, Y. (April 2, 2009). "Taxation and the worlds of welfare". Socio-Economic Review 7 (3): 431–457. doi:10.1093/ser/mwp005. Retrieved May 5, 2013.
^ Jump up to: a b c Congressional Budget Office (July 2012). "The Distribution of Household Income and Federal Taxes, 2008 and 2009". Retrieved April 3, 2013.
Jump up ^ Crook, Clive. "U.S. Taxes Really Are Unusually Progressive". The Atlantic (Washington DC). Retrieved April 3, 2013.
Jump up ^ "How Much Do People Pay in Federal Taxes?". Peter G. Peterson Foundation. Retrieved April 3, 2013.
Jump up ^ "Table T12-0178 Baseline Distribution of Cash Income and Federal Taxes Under Current Law Share of Federal Taxes by Cash Income Percentile". Tax Policy Center. Retrieved April 3, 2013.
Jump up ^ "The Design of the Original Social Security Act". Social Security Online. U.S. Social Security Administration. Retrieved April 3, 2013.
Jump up ^ Blahous, Charles (February 24, 2012). "The Dark Side of the Payroll Tax Cut". Defining Ideas. Hoover Institution. Retrieved April 3, 2013.
Jump up ^ Stephen, Ohlemacher (March 3, 2013). "Tax bills for rich families approach 30-year high". The Seattle Times. Associated Press. Retrieved April 3, 2013.
Jump up ^ "Who will pay what in 2013 taxes?". The Seattle Times. Associated Press. March 3, 2013. Retrieved April 3, 2013.
Jump up ^ Malm, Elizabeth (February 20, 2013). "Comments on Who Pays? A Distributional Analysis of the Tax Systems in All 50 States". Tax Foundation. Retrieved April 3, 2013.
Jump up ^ Matthews, Dylan (September 19, 2012). "Other countries don't have a "47%"". The Washington Post blog. Retrieved May 5, 2013.
Jump up ^ "US national debt surpasses $16 trillion". Boston Business Journal blog. September 5, 2012. Retrieved April 23, 2013.
Jump up ^ Thornton, Daniel L. (Nov./Dec. 2012). "The U.S. Deficit/Debt Problem : A Longer – Run Perspective". Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review. Retrieved May 7, 2013.
Jump up ^ Lopez, Luciana (January 28, 2013). "Fitch backs away from downgrade of U.S. credit rating". Reuters. Retrieved March 26, 2013.
Jump up ^ "Federal Debt: Answers to Frequently Asked Questions". Government Accountability Office. Retrieved April 16, 2012.
Jump up ^ Lynch, David J. (Mar 21, 2013). "Economists See No Crisis With U.S. Debt as Economy Gains". Bloomberg (New York). Retrieved March 25, 2013.
Jump up ^ "The Air Force in Facts and Figures (Armed Forces Manpower Trends, End Strength in Thousands)". Air Force Magazine. May 2009. Retrieved October 9, 2009.
Jump up ^ "What does Selective Service provide for America?". Selective Service System. Retrieved February 11, 2012.
Jump up ^ "Base Structure Report, Fiscal Year 2008 Baseline". Department of Defense. Retrieved October 9, 2009.
Jump up ^ "Active Duty Military Personnel Strengths by Regional Area and by Country (309A)". Department of Defense. March 31, 2010. Retrieved October 7, 2010.
Jump up ^ Ikenberry, G. John (March/April 2004). "Illusions of Empire: Defining the New American Order". Foreign Affairs. Archived from the original on 2012-05-25. Kreisler, Harry, and Chalmers Johnson (January 29, 2004). "Conversations with History". University of California at Berkeley. Retrieved June 21, 2007.
Jump up ^ "The 15 Countries with the Highest Military Expenditure in 2011". Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Retrieved February 4, 2013.
Jump up ^ "Compare". CIA World Factbook. RealClearWorld. Retrieved February 4, 2013.
Jump up ^ "Fiscal Year 2013 Historical Tables". Budget of the U.S. Government. White House OMB. Retrieved November 24, 2012.
Jump up ^ "Fiscal Year 2012 Budget Request Overview". Department of Defense. February 2011. Retrieved July 25, 2011.
Jump up ^ Basu, Moni (December 18, 2011). "Deadly Iraq War Ends with Exit of Last U.S. Troops". CNN. Retrieved February 5, 2012.
Jump up ^ "Operation Iraqi Freedom". Iraq Coalition Casualty Count. February 5, 2012. Retrieved February 5, 2012.
Jump up ^ Cherian, John (April 7, 2012). "Turning Point". Frontline (The Hindu Group). Archived from the original on December 2, 2012. Retrieved December 2, 2012. "There are currently 90,000 U.S. troops deployed in the country."
Jump up ^ "Operation Enduring Freedom". Iraq Coalition Casualty Count. April 4, 2012. Retrieved April 4, 2012.
Jump up ^ "Local Police Departments, 2003". U.S. Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics. May 2006. Retrieved December 7, 2011.
Jump up ^ "U.S. Federal LAw Enforcement Agencies, Who Governs & What They Do". chiff.com. Retrieved August 21, 2012.
Jump up ^ "Eighth United Nations Survey of Crime Trends and Operations of Criminal Justice Systems (2001–2002)". United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). March 31, 2005. Retrieved May 18, 2008.
Jump up ^ "Crime in the United States, 2011". FBI '(Uniform Crime Statistics—Murder)'. Retrieved January 23, 2013.
Jump up ^ "UNODC Homicide Statistics". United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). Retrieved January 23, 2013.
^ Jump up to: a b c "New Incarceration Figures: Thirty-Three Consecutive Years of Growth". Sentencing Project. December 2006. Retrieved June 10, 2007.
Jump up ^ Walmsley, Roy (2005). "World Prison Population List". King's College London, International Centre for Prison Studies. Archived from the original on June 28, 2007. Retrieved October 19, 2007. For the latest data, see "Prison Brief for United States of America". King's College London, International Centre for Prison Studies. June 21, 2006. Archived from the original on August 4, 2007. Retrieved October 19, 2007. For other estimates of the incarceration rate in China and North Korea see Adams, Cecil (February 6, 2004). "Does the United States Lead the World in Prison Population?". The Straight Dope. Retrieved October 11, 2007.
Jump up ^ "Pew Report Finds More than One in 100 Adults are Behind Bars". Pew Center on the States. February 28, 2008. Archived from the original on March 3, 2008. Retrieved March 2, 2008.
Jump up ^ "Incarceration Rate, 1980–2005". U.S. Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics. 2006. Archived from the original on June 11, 2007. Retrieved June 10, 2007.
Jump up ^ "World Prison Population List (8th edition)". King's College London, International Centre for Prison Studies. 2009. Retrieved July 23, 2011.
Jump up ^ "The Impact of the War on Drugs on U.S. Incarceration". Human Rights Watch. May 2000. Retrieved June 10, 2007.
Jump up ^ http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p08.pdf
Jump up ^ Simpson, Ian (2 May 2013). "Maryland becomes latest U.S. state to abolish death penalty". Yahoo! News. Reuters. Archived from the original on 24 June 2013. Retrieved July 4, 2013.
Jump up ^ "U.S. Executions Since 1976". Clark Prosecutor. Retrieved December 5, 2012.
Jump up ^ "Searchable Execution Database". Death Penalty Information Center. Retrieved October 10, 2012.
Jump up ^ "Executions Around the World". Death Penalty Information Center. 2010. Retrieved July 23, 2011.
Jump up ^ "Gross Domestic Product, 1 Decimal (GDP)". Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. June 26, 2013. Retrieved June 26, 2013.
Jump up ^ "National Income and Product Accounts Gross Domestic Product, 2nd Quarter 2013 (advance estimate)". Bureau of Economic Analysis. July 31, 2013. Retrieved August 23, 2013. Change is based on chained 2005 dollars. Quarterly growth is expressed as an annualized rate.
Jump up ^ "Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: All Items (CPIAUCSL)". Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. April 5, 2013. Retrieved April 5, 2013.
Jump up ^ "Civilian Employment-Population Ratio (EMRATIO)". Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. April 5, 2013. Retrieved April 5, 2013.
Jump up ^ "Employment Situation Summary". United States Department of Labor. August 2, 2013. Retrieved August 2, 2013.
Jump up ^ "Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey". Bureau of Labor Statistics. United States Department of Labor. April 7, 2013. Retrieved April 7, 2013.
Jump up ^ "Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2010". U.S. Census Bureau. September 14, 2010. Retrieved September 16, 2011.
Jump up ^ "Federal Debt: Total Public Debt (GFDEBTN)". Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. April 5, 2013. Retrieved April 5, 2013.
Jump up ^ "Flow of Funds Accounts of the United States: Flows and Outstandings Fourth Quarter 2011". U.S. Federal Reserve. March 8, 2012. Retrieved April 17, 2012.
Jump up ^ Wright, Gavin, and Jesse Czelusta, "Resource-Based Growth Past and Present", in Natural Resources: Neither Curse Nor Destiny, ed. Daniel Lederman and William Maloney (World Bank, 2007), p. 185. ISBN 0-8213-6545-2.
Jump up ^ "EU27 Population 502.5 Million at 1 January 2011". Eurostat Press Office. July 28, 2011. Retrieved June 19, 2012.
Jump up ^ "Currency Composition of Official Foreign Exchange Reserves". International Monetary Fund. Retrieved April 9, 2012.
^ Jump up to: a b "Trade Statistics". Greyhill Advisors. Retrieved October 6, 2011.
Jump up ^ "Top Ten Countries with which the U.S. Trades". U.S. Census Bureau. August 2009. Retrieved October 12, 2009.
Jump up ^ "National debt: Whom does the US owe?". CSMonitor.com. February 4, 2011. Retrieved July 14, 2011.
Jump up ^ "Market highlights for first half-year 2010". World Federation of Exchanges. Retrieved November 22, 2012.
Jump up ^ "GDP by Industry". Greyhill Advisors. Retrieved October 13, 2011.
^ Jump up to: a b "USA Economy in Brief". U.S. Dept. of State, International Information Programs. Archived from the original on March 12, 2008. Retrieved March 12, 2008.
Jump up ^ "Table 724—Number of Tax Returns, Receipts, and Net Income by Type of Business and Industry: 2005". U.S. Census Bureau. Retrieved October 12, 2009.
Jump up ^ "Table 964—Gross Domestic Product in Current and Real (2000) Dollars by Industry: 2006". U.S. Census Bureau. May 2008. Retrieved October 12, 2009.
Jump up ^ "Rank Order—Oil (Production)". The World Factbook. CIA. Retrieved October 12, 2009."Rank Order—Oil (Consumption)". The World Factbook. CIA. Retrieved October 12, 2009."Crude Oil and Total Petroleum Imports Top 15 Countries". U.S. Energy Information Administration. September 29, 2009. Retrieved October 12, 2009.
Jump up ^ "Corn". U.S. Grains Council. Archived from the original on January 12, 2008. Retrieved March 13, 2008.
Jump up ^ "Soybean Demand Continues to Drive Production". Worldwatch Institute. November 6, 2007. Retrieved March 13, 2008.
Jump up ^ "Sony, LG, Wal-Mart among Most Extendible Brands". Cheskin. June 6, 2005. Retrieved June 19, 2007.
Jump up ^ "Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE)/Gross Domestic Product (GDP)" FRED Graph, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
Jump up ^ Fuller, Thomas (June 15, 2005). "In the East, Many EU Work Rules Don't Apply". International Herald Tribune. Retrieved June 28, 2007.
Jump up ^ "Doing Business in the United States (2006)". World Bank. Retrieved June 28, 2007.
Jump up ^ "Total Economy Database, Summary Statistics, 1995–2010". The Conference Board Total Economy Database. The Conference Board. September 2010. Retrieved September 20, 2009.
Jump up ^ Rebecca Ray, Milla Sanes, and John Schmitt (May 2013). No-Vacation Nation Revisited. Center for Economic and Policy Research. Retrieved 08 September 2013.
Jump up ^ "Most Americans say U.S. in recession despite data: poll". Reuters. April 28, 2011.
Jump up ^ "OECD Better Life Index". OECD Publishing. Retrieved November 25, 2012.
Jump up ^ "Household Income". Society at a Glance 2011: OECD Social Indicators. OECD Publishing. April 12, 2011. doi:10.1787/soc_glance-2011-6-en. Retrieved November 25, 2012.
Jump up ^ "Household Income for States: 2010 and 2011" United States Census, American Community Survey Briefs, September 2012, Appendix Table 1, page 5
Jump up ^ "Global Food Security Index". The Economist Intelligence Unit. March 5, 2013. Retrieved April 8, 2013.
Jump up ^ Alisha Coleman-Jensen, Mark Nord, and Anita Singh (September 05, 2013). Household Food Security in the United States in 2012. USDA Economic Research Service. Retrieved 5 September 2013.
^ Jump up to: a b "Understanding Poverty in the United States: Surprising Facts About America's Poor". Heritage Foundation. September 13, 2011. Retrieved April 8, 2013.
Jump up ^ "Chart Book: The Legacy of the Great Recession — Center on Budget and Policy Priorities". Cbpp.org. March 12, 2013. Retrieved March 27, 2013.
Jump up ^ "Bureau of Labor Statistics Data". Data.bls.gov. December 1, 2010. Retrieved March 27, 2013.
Jump up ^ Schwartz, Nelson (March 3, 2013). "Recovery in U.S. Is Lifting Profits, but Not Adding Jobs". The New York Times. Retrieved March 18, 2013.
Jump up ^ McKinnon, John D. (January 1, 2013). "Analysis: 77% of Households to See Tax Increase". The Wall Street Journal (blog) (New York). Retrieved April 8, 2013.
Jump up ^ "U.S. Poverty: Census Finds Nearly Half Of Americans Are Poor Or Low-Income". The Huffington Post. December 15, 2011. Retrieved June 5, 2013.
Jump up ^ Yen, Hope (28 July 2013). 80 Percent Of U.S. Adults Face Near-Poverty, Unemployment: Survey. The Huffington Post. Retrieved 28 July 2013.
Jump up ^ "The Most Important Chart in American Politics". Time (New York). February 4, 2013.
Jump up ^ "Extreme Poverty in the United States, 1996 to 2011" National Poverty Center, February 2012
Jump up ^ "Household Food Security in the United States in 2011". USDA. September 2012. Retrieved April 8, 2013.
Jump up ^ "The Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress (2009)". Retrieved April 23, 2013.
^ Jump up to: a b 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.
Jump up ^ Kenworthy, L. (1999). "Do Social-Welfare Policies Reduce Poverty? A Cross-National Assessment" Social Forces 77(3), 1119–1139. Bradley, D., E. Huber, S. Moller, F. Nielsen, and J. D. Stephens (2003). "Determinants of Relative Poverty in Advanced Capitalist Democracies". American Sociological Review 68 (1): 22–51.
Jump up ^ Gould, Elise and Wething, Hilary (24 July 2012). "U.S. poverty rates higher, safety net weaker than in peer countries." Economic Policy Institute. Retrieved 15 July 2013.
Jump up ^ Fishback, Price V. (May 2010). "Social Welfare Expenditures in the United States and the Nordic Countries: 1900–2003". NBER Working Paper series. 15982.
Jump up ^ Orr, D. (November–December 2004). "Social Security Isn't Broken: So Why the Rush to 'Fix' It?" In C. Sturr and R. Vasudevan, eds. (2007). Current Economic Issues. Boston: Economic Affairs Bureau.
Jump up ^ Starr, Paul (February 25, 2008). "A New Deal of Their Own". American Prospect. Retrieved July 24, 2008.
Jump up ^ "Child Poverty in Perspective: An Overview of Child Well-Being in Rich Countries". UNICEF. 2007. Retrieved September 10, 2007.
Jump up ^ "U.S. labor market performance in international perspective". Monthly Labor Review (Bureau of Labor Statistics). June 2002. Retrieved 22 August 2013.
Jump up ^ "Chronic Unemployment in the Euro Area: Causes and Cures". World Economic Outlook. International Monetary Fund. 1999. Retrieved 22 August 2013.
Jump up ^ "Unemployment". Euro Economics. University of North Carolina. Retrieved 22 August 2013. "Chart"
^ Jump up to: a b "The Mismeasure of Inequality". Policy Review (Hoover Institution Stanford University). August 1, 2012. Retrieved 22 August 2013.
Jump up ^ Tami Luhby (November 8, 2011). Global income inequality: Where the U.S. ranks. CNNMoney Retrieved 18 August 2013.
Jump up ^ Facundo Alvaredo, Anthony B. Atkinson, Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez (2013). The Top 1 Percent in International and Historical Perspective. Journal of Economic Perspectives. Retrieved 16 August 2013.
Jump up ^ Saez, E. (October 2007). "Table A1: Top Fractiles Income Shares (Excluding Capital Gains) in the U.S., 1913–2005". UC Berkeley. Retrieved July 24, 2008."Field Listing—Distribution of Family Income—Gini Index". The World Factbook. CIA. June 14, 2007. Retrieved June 17, 2007.
^ Jump up to: a b Schneider, Donald (July 29, 2013). "A Guide to Understanding International Comparisons of Economic Mobility". The Heritage Foundation. Retrieved 22 August 2013.
Jump up ^ Winship, Scott (Spring 2013). "Overstating the Costs of Inequality". National Affairs. Retrieved 22 August 2013.
Jump up ^ Emmanuel Saez (03 September 2013). Striking it Richer: The Evolution of Top Incomes in the United States. UC Berkley. Retrieved 11 September 2013.
Jump up ^ Woolf, Steven; Aaron, Laudon. "U.S. Health in International Perspective". National Research Council and Institute of Medicine. pp. 171–172. Retrieved April 8, 2013.
Jump up ^ Domhoff, G. William (December 2006). "Table 4: Percentage of Wealth Held by the Top 10% of the Adult Population in Various Western Countries". Power in America. University of California at Santa Cruz, Sociology Dept. Retrieved August 21, 2006.
Jump up ^ "2013 Human Development Report". United Nations Development Programme. Retrieved 28 July 2013.
Jump up ^ THE 2012 LEGATUM PROSPERITY INDEX TABLE RANKINGS. Legatum Institute, 2012.
Jump up ^ Altman, Roger C. "The Great Crash, 2008". Foreign Affairs. Retrieved February 27, 2009.
Jump up ^ "Americans' wealth drops $1.3 trillion". CNN. June 11, 2009.
Jump up ^ "U.S. household wealth falls $11.2 trillion in 2008". Reuters. March 12, 2009.
Jump up ^ Roller, Emma (March 4, 2013). "Which Country Has the Most Billionaires Per Capita?". Slate. Retrieved April 12, 2013.
Jump up ^ Joyce, Hanson (June 20, 2012). "Top 10 Countries With Most Millionaires: Capgemini/RBC". Advisor One. Retrieved April 8, 2013.
Jump up ^ Brooks, Chad (Jun 22, 2012). "How Most Millionaires Got Rich". Discovery. Retrieved April 8, 2013.
Jump up ^ Kroll, Luisa (March 25, 2013). "Inside The 2013 Billionaires List: Facts and Figures". Forbes. Retrieved April 8, 2013.
Jump up ^ "Interstate FAQ (Question #3)". Federal Highway Administration. 2006. Retrieved March 4, 2009.
Jump up ^ "China Expressway System to Exceed US Interstates". New Geography (Grand Forks, ND). January 22, 2011. Retrieved September 16, 2011.
Jump up ^ "China overtakes US in car sales". The Guardian (London). January 8, 2010. Retrieved July 10, 2011.
Jump up ^ "Motor vehicles statistics – countries compared worldwide". NationMaster. Retrieved July 10, 2011.
Jump up ^ "Household, Individual, and Vehicle Characteristics". 2001 National Household Travel Survey. U.S. Dept. of Transportation, Bureau of Transportation Statistics. Retrieved August 15, 2007.
Jump up ^ "Daily Passenger Travel". 2001 National Household Travel Survey. U.S. Dept. of Transportation, Bureau of Transportation Statistics. Retrieved August 15, 2007.
Jump up ^ Renne, John L.; Wells, Jan S. (2003). "Emerging European-Style Planning in the United States: Transit-Oriented Development". Rutgers University. p. 2. Retrieved June 11, 2007.
Jump up ^ "NatGeo surveys countries' transit use: guess who comes in last". Switchboard.nrdc.org. May 18, 2009. Retrieved July 10, 2011.
Jump up ^ "Intercity Passenger Rail: National Policy and Strategies Needed to Maximize Public Benefits from Federal Expenditures". U.S. Government Accountability Office. November 13, 2006. Retrieved June 20, 2007.
Jump up ^ "Amtrak Ridership Records". Amtrak. June 8, 2011. Retrieved February 29, 2012.
Jump up ^ McGill, Tracy (January 1, 2011). "3 Reasons Light Rail Is an Efficient Transportation Option for U.S. Cities". MetaEfficient. Retrieved June 14, 2013.
Jump up ^ "Bicycling to Work". Network of Employers for Traffic Safety. Retrieved July 10, 2011.
Jump up ^ "Scheduled Passengers Carried". International Air Transport Association (IATA). 2011. Retrieved February 17, 2012.
Jump up ^ "Passenger Traffic 2006 Final". Airports Council International. July 18, 2007. Retrieved August 15, 2007.[dead link]
Jump up ^ "Diagram 1: Energy Flow, 2007". EIA Annual Energy Review. U.S. Dept. of Energy, Energy Information Administration. 2007. Retrieved June 25, 2008.
Jump up ^ "Rank Order—Oil (Consumption)". The World Factbook. CIA. September 6, 2007. Retrieved September 14, 2007.
Jump up ^ "Atomic Renaissance". The Economist (London). September 6, 2007. Retrieved September 6, 2007.
Jump up ^ "BP Statistical Review of World Energy" (XLS). British Petroleum. June 2007. Retrieved February 22, 2010.
Jump up ^ Ames, Paul (May 30, 2013). "Could fracking make the Persian Gulf irrelevant?". Salon. Retrieved May 30, 2012. "Since November, the United States has replaced Saudi Arabia as the world's biggest producer of crude oil. It had already overtaken Russia as the leading producer of natural gas."
Jump up ^ "Edison's Story". Lemelson Center. Retrieved August 21, 2012.
Jump up ^ 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.
Jump up ^ "Research and Development (R&D) Expenditures by Source and Objective: 1970 to 2004". U.S. Census Bureau. Retrieved June 19, 2007.
Jump up ^ MacLeod, Donald (March 21, 2006). "Britain Second in World Research Rankings". The Guardian (London). Retrieved May 14, 2006.
Jump up ^ "Exploring the Digital Nation—Computer and Internet Use at Home". U.S. Dept. of Commerce, Economics and Statistics Administration. November 8, 2011. Retrieved April 11, 2012.
Jump up ^ "Report: 90% of Americans own a computerized gadget". CNN. February 3, 2011. Retrieved December 27, 2012.
Jump up ^ "ISAAA Brief 39-2008: Executive Summary—Global Status of Commercialized Biotech/GM Crops: 2008". International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications. p. 15. Retrieved July 16, 2010.
Jump up ^ Rosenstone, Steven J. (December 17, 2009). "Public Education for the Common Good". University of Minnesota. Retrieved March 6, 2009.
Jump up ^ "Ages for Compulsory School Attendance...". U.S. Dept. of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. Retrieved June 10, 2007.
Jump up ^ "Statistics About Non-Public Education in the United States". U.S. Dept. of Education, Office of Non-Public Education. Retrieved June 5, 2007.
Jump up ^ "QS World University Rankings". Topuniversities. Retrieved July 10, 2011.
Jump up ^ "Top 200 – The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2010–2011". Timeshighereducation.co.uk. Retrieved July 10, 2011.
Jump up ^ "Educational Attainment in the United States: 2003". U.S. Census Bureau. Retrieved August 1, 2006.
Jump up ^ 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).
Jump up ^ "Human Development Indicators". United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Reports. 2005. Archived from the original on June 20, 2007. Retrieved January 14, 2008.
Jump up ^ Student Loan Debt Exceeds One Trillion Dollars. NPR, 04 April 2012. Retrieved 08 September 2013.
Jump up ^ "Country Comparison: Life Expectancy at Birth". The World Factbook. CIA. Retrieved October 25, 2011.
^ Jump up to: a b Murray, Christopher J.L.; et al (July 10, 2013). "The State of US Health, 1990-2010: Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors". Journal of the American Medical Association. doi:10.1001/jama.2013.13805. Retrieved July 11, 2013.
Jump up ^ MacAskill, Ewen (August 13, 2007). "US Tumbles Down the World Ratings List for Life Expectancy". The Guardian (London). Retrieved August 15, 2007.
Jump up ^ "Slideshow: Most obese countries". Reuters. Retrieved November 22, 2012.
Jump up ^ "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.
Jump up ^ Schlosser, Eric (2002). Fast Food Nation. New York: Perennial. p. 240. ISBN 0-06-093845-5.
Jump up ^ "Fast Food, Central Nervous System Insulin Resistance, and Obesity". Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology. American Heart Association. 2005. Retrieved June 17, 2007.
Jump up ^ "Country Comparison: Infant Mortality Rate". The World Factbook. CIA. Retrieved October 25, 2011.
Jump up ^ "About Teen Pregnancy". Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Retrieved 18 August 2013.
Jump up ^ https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2223rank.html?countryname=United%20States&countrycode=us&regionCode=noa&rank=136#us
Jump up ^ Tara Siegel Bernard (22 February 2013). In Paid Family Leave, U.S. Trails Most of the Globe. The New York Times Retrieved 27 August 2013.
Jump up ^ Cowen, Tyler (October 5, 2006). "Poor U.S. Scores in Health Care Don't Measure Nobels and Innovation". The New York Times. Retrieved October 9, 2012.
Jump up ^ Whitman, Glen; Raad, Raymond. "Bending the Productivity Curve: Why America Leads the World in Medical Innovation". The Cato Institute. Retrieved October 9, 2012.
Jump up ^ Martin, Nicole (August 21, 2007). "UK cancer survival rate lowest in Europe". The Telegraph. Retrieved 19 August 2013.
Jump up ^ Verdecchia, A; Francisci, S; Brenner, H; Gatta, G; Micheli, A; Mangone, L; Kunkler, I; EUROCARE-4 Working, Group (2007 Sep). "Recent cancer survival in Europe: a 2000-02 period analysis of EUROCARE-4 data.". The lancet oncology 8 (9): 784–96. PMID 17714993. Retrieved 19 August 2013.
Jump up ^ MD, Scott W. Atlas, (2011). In excellent health : setting the record straight on America's health care and charting a path for future reform. Stanford, California: Hoover Institution Press, Stanford University. pp. 199–205. ISBN 0817914447.
Jump up ^ Atlas 2011, pp. 205-207
Jump up ^ Wolf-Maier, K. (24 November 2003). "Hypertension Treatment and Control in Five European Countries, Canada, and the United States". Hypertension 43 (1): 10–17. doi:10.1161/01.HYP.0000103630.72812.10. Retrieved 19 August 2013.
Jump up ^ Atlas 2011, pp. 150-156
Jump up ^ O'Neill, June E; O'Neill, Dave M (2007). "Health Status, Health Care and Inequality: Canada vs. the U.S.". Forum for Health Economics & Policy. Berkeley Electronic Press. doi:10.2202/1558-9544.1094. Retrieved 19 August 2013.
Jump up ^ OECD Health Data 2000: A Comparative Analysis of 29 Countries [CD-ROM] (OECD: Paris, 2000). See also "The U.S. Healthcare System: The Best in the World or Just the Most Expensive?". University of Maine. 2001. Retrieved November 29, 2006.
Jump up ^ "Health, United States, 2006". Centers for Disease Control, National Center for Health Statistics. Retrieved November 24, 2006.
Jump up ^ "Poverty Remains Higher, and Median Income for Non-Elderly Is Lower, Than When Recession Hit Bottom: Poor Performance Unprecedented for Four-Year Recovery Period". Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. September 1, 2006. Retrieved June 24, 2007.
Jump up ^ Abelson, Reed (June 10, 2008). "Ranks of Underinsured Are Rising, Study Finds". The New York Times. Retrieved October 25, 2008.
Jump up ^ Blewett, Lynn A. et al. (December 2006). "How Much Health Insurance Is Enough? Revisiting the Concept of Underinsurance". Medical Care Research and Review 63 (6): 663–700. doi:10.1177/1077558706293634. ISSN 1077-5587. PMID 17099121.
Jump up ^ Fahrenthold, David A. (April 5, 2006). "Mass. Bill Requires Health Coverage". The Washington Post. Retrieved June 19, 2007.
Jump up ^ "Out-of-Pocket Spending in the Last Five Years of Life" Journal of General Internal Medicine, February 2013, Volume 28, Issue 2, pp 304–309
Jump up ^ "Health Care Law 54% Favor Repeal of Health Care Law". Rasmussen Reports. Retrieved October 13, 2012.
Jump up ^ "Debate on ObamaCare to intensify in the wake of landmark Supreme Court ruling". Fox News. June 29, 2012. Retrieved October 14, 2012.
Jump up ^ "Statue of Liberty". World Heritage. UNESCO. Retrieved October 20, 2011.
Jump up ^ Thompson, William; Hickey, Joseph (2005). Society in Focus. Boston: Pearson. ISBN 0-205-41365-X.
Jump up ^ Fiorina, Morris P.; Peterson, Paul E. (2000). The New American Democracy. London: Longman, p. 97. ISBN 0-321-07058-5.
Jump up ^ Holloway, Joseph E. (2005). Africanisms in American Culture, 2d ed. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, pp. 18–38. ISBN 0-253-34479-4. Johnson, Fern L. (1999). Speaking Culturally: Language Diversity in the United States. Thousand Oaks, Calif., London, and New Delhi: Sage, p. 116. ISBN 0-8039-5912-5.
Jump up ^ "Individualism". Clearly Cultural. Retrieved February 28, 2009.
^ Jump up to: a b "A Family Affair: Intergenerational Social Mobility across OECD Countries". Economic Policy Reforms: Going for Growth. OECD. 2010. Retrieved September 20, 2010. Blanden, Jo; Gregg, Paul; Malchin, Stephen (April 2005). "Intergenerational Mobility in Europe and North America". Centre for Economic Performance. Archived from the original on June 23, 2006.
Jump up ^ Gould, Elise (10 October 2012). "U.S. lags behind peer countries in mobility." Economic Policy Institute. Retrieved 15 July 2013.
Jump up ^ CAP: Understanding Mobility in America. April 26, 2006
Jump up ^ DeParle, Jason (4 January 2012). Harder for Americans to Rise From Lower Rungs. The New York Times. Retrieved 8 September 2013.
Jump up ^ Gutfield, Amon (2002). American Exceptionalism: The Effects of Plenty on the American Experience. Brighton and Portland: Sussex Academic Press. p. 65. ISBN 1-903900-08-5.
Jump up ^ Zweig, Michael (2004). What's Class Got To Do With It, American Society in the Twenty-First Century. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. ISBN 0-8014-8899-0. "Effects of Social Class and Interactive Setting on Maternal Speech". Education Resource Information Center. Retrieved January 27, 2007.
Jump up ^ Ehrenreich, Barbara (1989). Fear of Falling, The Inner Life of the Middle Class. New York: HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-097333-1.
Jump up ^ Eichar, Douglas (1989). Occupation and Class Consciousness in America. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-313-26111-3.
Jump up ^ O'Keefe, Kevin (2005). The Average American. New York: PublicAffairs. ISBN 1-58648-270-X.
Jump up ^ Village Voice: 100 Best Films of the 20th century (2001). Filmsite.
Jump up ^ "Sight and Sound Top Ten Poll 2002". Archived from the original on 2012-05-25..[dead link]. British Film Institute. Retrieved June 19, 2007.
Jump up ^ "Nigeria surpasses Hollywood as world's second largest film producer" (Press release). United Nations. May 5, 2009. Retrieved February 17, 2013.
Jump up ^ "Media Statistics > Television Viewing by Country". NationMaster. Retrieved June 3, 2007.
Jump up ^ "Broadband and Media Consumption". eMarketer. June 7, 2007. Retrieved June 10, 2007.
Jump up ^ "TV Fans Spill into Web Sites". eMarketer. June 7, 2007. Retrieved June 10, 2007.
Jump up ^ "Top Sites in United States". Alexa. 2010. Retrieved March 27, 2010.
^ Jump up to: a b Biddle, Julian (2001). What Was Hot!: Five Decades of Pop Culture in America. New York: Citadel, p. ix. ISBN 0-8065-2311-5.
Jump up ^ Bloom, Harold. 1999. Emily Dickinson. Broomall, PA: Chelsea House. p. 9. ISBN 0-7910-5106-4.
Jump up ^ 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.
Jump up ^ Quinn, Edward (2006). A Dictionary of Literary and Thematic Terms. Infobase, p. 361. ISBN 0-8160-6243-9. Seed, David (2009). A Companion to Twentieth-Century United States Fiction. Chichester, West Sussex: John Wiley and Sons, p. 76. ISBN 1-4051-4691-5. Meyers, Jeffrey (1999). Hemingway: A Biography. New York: Da Capo, p. 139. ISBN 0-306-80890-0.
Jump up ^ Summers, Lawrence H. (November 19, 2006). "The Great Liberator". The New York Times. Retrieved May 17, 2013.
Jump up ^ McFadden, Robert D. (January 9, 2013). "James M. Buchanan, Economic Scholar and Nobel Laureate, Dies at 93". The New York Times. Retrieved May 17, 2013.
Jump up ^ Brown, Milton W. (1988 1963). The Story of the Armory Show. New York: Abbeville. ISBN 0-89659-795-4.
Jump up ^ Daniels, Les (1998). Superman: The Complete History (1st ed.). Titan Books. p. 11. ISBN 1-85286-988-7.
^ Jump up to: a b Klapthor, James N. (August 23, 2003). "What, When, and Where Americans Eat in 2003". Newswise/Institute of Food Technologists. Retrieved June 19, 2007.
Jump up ^ Smith, 2004, pp.131-132
Jump up ^ Levenstein, 2003, pp.154–55
Jump up ^ Boslaugh, Sarah (2010). "Obesity Epidemic", in Culture Wars: An Encyclopedia of Issues, Viewpoints, and Voices, ed. Roger Chapman. Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, pp. 413–14. ISBN 978-0-7656-1761-3.
Jump up ^ "Fast Food, Central Nervous System Insulin Resistance, and Obesity". Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology. American Heart Association. 2005. Retrieved June 9, 2007. "Let's Eat Out: Americans Weigh Taste, Convenience, and Nutrition". U.S. Dept. of Agriculture. Retrieved June 9, 2007.
Jump up ^ Global sports market to hit $141 billion in 2012. Reuters. Retrieved on 2013-07-24.
Jump up ^ Krane, David K. (October 30, 2002). "Professional Football Widens Its Lead Over Baseball as Nation's Favorite Sport". Harris Interactive. 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 0-375-50454-0.
Jump up ^ Cowen, Tyler; Grier, Kevin (February 9, 2012). "What Would the End of Football Look Like?". Grantland/ESPN. Retrieved February 12, 2012.
Jump up ^ Mccauley, Adam. "Mixed Martial Arts News". Topics.nytimes.com. Retrieved March 27, 2013.
Jump up ^ "All-Time Medal Standings, 1896–2004". Information Please. Retrieved June 14, 2007. "Distribution of Medals—2008 Summer Games". Fact Monster. Retrieved September 2, 2008.
Jump up ^ "All-Time Medal Standings, 1924–2006". Information Please. Retrieved June 14, 2007. "Olympic Medals". Vancouver Organizing Committee. Retrieved March 2, 2010. Norway is first.
Bibliography

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 978-0470768778.
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., Book
Bianchine, Peter J.; Russo, Thomas A. (1992). The Role of Epidemic Infectious Diseases in the Discovery of America,
(Allergy and Asthma Proceedings) 13 (5).
OceanSide Publications, Inc. pp. 225–232. doi:10.2500/108854192778817040. Retrieved September 9, 2012.a
Boyer, Paul S.; Clark, Cliffoed E. Jr.; Kett, Joseph F.; Salisbury, Neal; Sitkoff, Harvard; Woloch, Nancy (2007).
The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People. Cengage Learning. p. 588. ISBN 9780618801619., Book
Clingan, Edmund. An Introduction to Modern Western Civilization. iUniverse. ISBN 9781462054398., Book
Calloway, Colin G. New Worlds for All: Indians, Europeans, and the Remaking of Early America.
JHU Press. p. 229. ISBN 9780801859595., Book
Davis, Kenneth C. (1996). Don't know much about the Civil War. New York: William Marrow and Co. p. 518. ISBN 0-688-11814-3., Book
Daynes, Byron W.; Sussman, Glen (eds.) (2010). White House Politics and the Environment: Franklin D. Roosevelt to George W. Bush.
Texas A&M University Press. p. 320. ISBN 9781603442541. "Presidential environmental policies, 1933-2009", Book
Feldstein, Sylvan G.; Fabozzi, CFA, Frank J. The Handbook of Municipal Bonds.
John Wiley & Sons, Jan 13, 2011. p. 1376. ISBN 9781118044940., Book
Gold, Susan Dudley (2006). United States V. Amistad: Slave Ship Mutiny.
Marshall Cavendish. p. 144. ISBN 9780761421436., Book
Ferguson, Thomas; Rogers, Joel (1986). "The Myth of America's Turn to the Right". The Atlantic 257 (5): 43–53. Retrieved March 11, 2013.
Fraser, Seve; Gerstle, Gary (1989). The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order: 1930–1980. American History: Political science.
Princeton University Press. p. 311. ISBN 9780691006079.
Gordon, John Steele (2004). An Empire of Wealth: The Epic History of American Economic Power. HarperCollins., Book
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 9780313352416.
Hughes, David (2007). The British Chronicles 1. Westminister, Maryland:
Heritage Books. p. 347.
Jacobs, Lawrence R. (2010). Health Care Reform and American Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know: What Everyone Needs to Know.
Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199781423.
Johnson, Paul (1997). A History of the American People. HarperCollins. pp. 26–30., eBook version
Juergens, Tom (2011). Wicked Puritans of Essex County.
The History Press. p. 112. ISBN 9781596295667., Book
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 9780816033379., Book
Leckie, Robert (1990). None died in vain: The Saga of the American Civil War. New York: Harper-Collins. p. 682. ISBN 0-06-016280-5., Book
Leffler, Melvyn P. (2010). "The emergence of an American grand strategy, 1945–1952".
In Melvyn P. Leffler and Odd Arne Westad, eds.,The Cambridge History of the Cold War, Volume 1: Origins (pp. 67–89).
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-83719-4.
Lemon, James T. (1987). "Colonial America in the 18th Century". In Robert D. Mitchell; Paul A. Groves. North America: the historical geography of a changing continent. Rowman & Littlefield., PDF
Lien, Ph.D, Arnold Johnson (1913). Studies in History, Economics, and Public Law, Volume 54. Longmans, Green & Co., Agents, London; Columbia University, New York. p. 604.
Karen Wood Weierman (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., Book
Levenstein, Harvey (2003). Revolution at the Table: The Transformation of the American Diet.
University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles. ISBN 0-520-23439-1.
Mann, Kaarin (2007). "Interracial Marriage In Early America: Motivation and the Colonial Project". Michigan Journal of History (
University of Michigan) (Fall). Retrieved September 8, 2012.
Price, David A. (2003). Love and Hate in Jamestown: John Smith, Pocahontas, and the Start of a New Nation. Random House. eBook version
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., Book
Ranlet, Philip (1999). Alden T. Vaughan, ed. New England Encounters: Indians and Euroamericans Ca. 1600–1850.
North Eastern University Press.
Rausch, David A. (1994). Native American Voices.
Baker Books, Grand Rapids. p. 180., Book
Remini, Robert V. (2007). The House: The History of the House of Representatives. HarperCollins. pp. 2–3., Book
Ripper, Jason (2008). American Stories: To 1877.
M.E. Sharpe. p. 299. ISBN 9780765629036., Book
Russell, John Henderson (1913). The Free Negro in Virginia, 1619-1865. Johns Hopkins University. p. 196., E'Book
Schneider, Dorothy; Schneider, Carl J. (2007). Slavery in America. Infobase Publishing. p. 554. ISBN 9781438108131., Book
Schultz, David Andrew (2009). Encyclopedia of the United States Constitution.
Infobase Publishing. p. 904. ISBN 9781438126777., Book
Simonson, Peter (2010). Refiguring Mass Communication: A History. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. ISBN 9780252077050. "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.", Book
Smith, Andrew F. (2004). The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America.
New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 131–32. ISBN 0-19-515437-1.
Soss, Joe (2010). Hacker, Jacob S.; Mettler, Suzanne, eds. Remaking America: Democracy and Public Policy in an Age of Inequality.
Russell Sage Foundation. ISBN 9781610446945., Book
Tadman, Michael (2000). "The Demographic Cost of Sugar: Debates on Slave Societies and Natural Increase in the Americas". American Historical Review 105 (5) (Oxford University Press)., Article
Taylor, Alan (2002). Eric Foner, ed. American Colonies: The Settling of North America. Penguin Books, New York. ISBN 0-670-87282-2., Book
Thornton, Russell (1987). American Indian Holocaust and Survival: A Population History Since 1492. Volume 186 of Civilization of the American Indian Series.
University of Oklahoma Press. p. 49. ISBN 9780806122205., Book
Tooze, Adam (2006). The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy.
London: Allen Lane. ISBN 978-0-713-99566-4.
Vaughan, Alden T. (1999). New England Encounters: Indians and Euroamericans Ca. 1600–1850.
North Eastern University Press.
Walton, Gary M.; Rockoff, Hugh (2009). History of the American Economy. Cengage Learning., Book
Williams, Daniel K. (2012). Questioning Conservatism's Ascendancy: A Reexamination of the Rightward Shift in Modern American Politics; {Reviews in American History} 40 (2).
The Johns Hopkins University Press. pp. 325–331. doi:10.1353/rah.2012.0043. Retrieved March 11, 2013.
Zinn, Howard (2005). A People's History of the United States. HarperCollins. ISBN 0060838655.
Website 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 D.C. Retrieved July 14, 2006.
"Slavery and the Slave Trade in Rhode Island".
"Peopling of Americas". Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural History. June 2004. Archived from the original on November 28, 2007. Retrieved June 19, 2007.
"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. 427. Archived from the original on 2013-04-15., Book
Nick Hayes (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". U.S. History.org. Independence Hall Association. Retrieved March 10, 2013.
Levy, Peter B. (1996). Encyclopedia of the Reagan-Bush Years. ABC-CLIO. p. 442. ISBN 9780313290183.
Wallander, Celeste A. (2003). "Western Policy and the Demise of the Soviet Union". Journal of Cold War Studies (President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) 5 (4): 137–177. doi:10.1162/152039703322483774. Retrieved March 11, 2013.
External links

Find more about United States at Wikipedia's sister projects
Definitions and translations from Wiktionary
Media from Commons
Learning resources from Wikiversity
Quotations from Wikiquote
Source texts from Wikisource
Textbooks from Wikibooks
Travel guide from Wikivoyage
United States entry at The World Factbook
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
Measure of America A variety of mapped information relating to health, education, income, and demographics for the U.S.
[show] v t e
United States topics
Categories: United States1776 establishments in the United StatesCountries bordering the Arctic OceanCountries bordering the Atlantic OceanCountries bordering the Pacific OceanEnglish-speaking countries and territoriesFederal constitutional republicsFormer British coloniesFormer confederationsG8 nationsG20 nationsLiberal democraciesMember states of NATOMember states of the United NationsNorthern American countriesRepublicsStates and territories established in 1776Superpowers
Navigation menu
Create accountLog inArticleTalkReadView sourceView history
Search
Main page
Contents
Featured content
Current events
Random article
Donate to Wikipedia
Interaction
Help
About Wikipedia
Community portal
Recent changes
Contact page
Toolbox
Print/export
Languages
Acèh
Адыгэбзэ
Afrikaans
Alemannisch
አማርኛ
Ænglisc
Аҧсшәа
العربية
Aragonés
ܐܪܡܝܐ
Arpetan
অসমীয়া
Asturianu
Avañe'ẽ
Авар
Aymar aru
Azərbaycanca
Bamanankan
বাংলা
Bân-lâm-gú
Basa Banyumasan
Башҡортса
Беларуская
Беларуская (тарашкевіца)‎
Bikol Central
Bislama
Български
Boarisch
བོད་ཡིག
Bosanski
Brezhoneg
Буряад
Català
Чӑвашла
Cebuano
Česky
Chavacano de Zamboanga
ChiShona
Corsu
Cymraeg
Dansk
Deitsch
Deutsch
ދިވެހިބަސް
Diné bizaad
Dolnoserbski
ཇོང་ཁ
Eesti
Ελληνικά
Emiliàn e rumagnòl
Эрзянь
Español
Esperanto
Estremeñu
Euskara
Eʋegbe
فارسی
Fiji Hindi
Føroyskt
Français
Frysk
Fulfulde
Furlan
Gaeilge
Gaelg
Gagauz
Gàidhlig
Galego
贛語
Gĩkũyũ
گیلکی
ગુજરાતી
𐌲𐌿𐍄𐌹𐍃𐌺
客家語/Hak-kâ-ngî
Хальмг
한국어
Hausa
Hawai`i
Հայերեն
हिन्दी
Hornjoserbsce
Hrvatski
Ido
Igbo
Ilokano
বিষ্ণুপ্রিয়া মণিপুরী
Bahasa Indonesia
Interlingua
Interlingue
ᐃᓄᒃᑎᑐᑦ/inuktitut
Iñupiak
Ирон
IsiXhosa
IsiZulu
Íslenska
Italiano
עברית
Basa Jawa
Kalaallisut
ಕನ್ನಡ
Kapampangan
Къарачай-малкъар
ქართული
Kaszëbsczi
Қазақша
Kernowek
Kinyarwanda
Kirundi
Kiswahili
Коми
Kreyòl ayisyen
Kurdî
Кыргызча
Кырык мары
Ladino
Лакку
Лезги
ລາວ
Latgaļu
Latina
Latviešu
Lëtzebuergesch
Lietuvių
Ligure
Limburgs
Lingála
Lojban
Luganda
Lumbaart
Magyar
Македонски
Malagasy
മലയാളം
Malti
Māori
मराठी
მარგალური
مصرى
مازِرونی
Bahasa Melayu
Baso Minangkabau
Mìng-dĕ̤ng-ngṳ̄
Mirandés
Мокшень
Монгол
မြန်မာဘာသာ
Nāhuatl
Dorerin Naoero
Nederlands
Nedersaksies
नेपाली
नेपाल भाषा
日本語
Napulitano
Нохчийн
Nordfriisk
Norfuk / Pitkern
Norsk bokmål
Norsk nynorsk
Nouormand
Novial
Occitan
Олык марий
ଓଡ଼ିଆ
Oromoo
Oʻzbekcha
ਪੰਜਾਬੀ
Pälzisch
Pangasinan
پنجابی
Papiamentu
پښتو
Перем Коми
ភាសាខ្មែរ
Picard
Piemontèis
Tok Pisin
Plattdüütsch
Polski
Português
Qaraqalpaqsha
Qırımtatarca
Reo Mā`ohi
Ripoarisch
Română
Romani
Rumantsch
Runa Simi
Русиньскый
Русский
Саха тыла
Sámegiella
Gagana Samoa
संस्कृतम्
Sängö
Sardu
Scots
Seeltersk
Sesotho sa Leboa
Setswana
Shqip
Sicilianu
සිංහල
Simple English
سنڌي
SiSwati
Slovenčina
Slovenščina
Словѣ́ньскъ / ⰔⰎⰑⰂⰡⰐⰠⰔⰍⰟ
Ślůnski
Soomaaliga
کوردی
Sranantongo
Српски / srpski
Srpskohrvatski / српскохрватски
Basa Sunda
Suomi
Svenska
Tagalog
தமிழ்
Taqbaylit
Tarandíne
Татарча/tatarça
తెలుగు
Tetun
ไทย
Тоҷикӣ
ᏣᎳᎩ
Tsetsêhestâhese
Türkçe
Türkmençe
Twi
Удмурт
Українська
اردو
ئۇيغۇرچە / Uyghurche
Vahcuengh
Vèneto
Vepsän kel’
Tiếng Việt
Volapük
Võro
Walon
文言
West-Vlams
Winaray
Wolof
吴语
Xitsonga
ייִדיש
Yorùbá

Wiki Loves Monuments: Photograph a monument, help Wikipedia and win!

ACF Fiorentina

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

  (Redirected from Fiorentina)

Fiorentina

Full name	Associazione Calcio Firenze Fiorentina SpA[1][2]
Nickname(s)	Viola (purple), Gigliati (Lilies)
Founded	1926 (AC Fiorentina) 2002 (ACF Fiorentina)
Ground	Stadio Artemio Franchi
Capacity	47,290
Owners	Diego and Andrea Della Valle
President	Mario Cognigni
Head coach	Vincenzo Montella
League	Serie A
2012–13	Serie A, 4th
Website	Club home page
Home colours Away colours Third colours
Current season

ACF Fiorentina,^[1][2] commonly referred to as simply Fiorentina, is a professional Italian football club from Florence, Tuscany. Founded by a merger in 1926 (refounded in 2002 following bankruptcy), Fiorentina have played at the top level of Italian football for the majority of their existence; only four clubs have played in more Serie A seasons.

Fiorentina have won two Italian Championships, in 1955–56 and again in 1968–69, as well as winning six Coppa Italia trophies and one Italian Super Cup. On the European stage, Fiorentina won the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup in 1960–61and lost the final one year later. They finished runners-up in the 1956–57 European Cup, losing against Real Madrid, and also came close to winning theUEFA Cup, finishing as runners-up in the 1989–90 season.

Since 1931, the club have played at the Stadio Artemio Franchi, which currently has a capacity of 47,282. The stadium has used several names over the years and has undergone several renovations. Fiorentina are known widely by the nickname Viola, a reference to their distinctive purple colours.

Contents

  [hide] 

• 1 History
  • 1.1 Foundation to World War II
  • 1.2 First scudetto and '50–'60s
  • 1.3 Second scudetto and '70s
  • 1.4 Pontello era
  • 1.5 Cecchi Gori era: from Champions League to bankruptcy
  • 1.6 The 2000s: Della Valle era
  • 1.7 The 2010s: Post-Prandelli Era
    • 1.7.1 2012–13 season
    • 1.7.2 2013–14 season
• 2 Players
  • 2.1 Current squad
    • 2.1.1 Out on loan
    • 2.1.2 Reserve Team
  • 2.2 Notable players
• 3 Managerial history
• 4 Club strip
  • 4.1 Badge
  • 4.2 Kit and colours
    • 4.2.1 Kit evolution
• 5 World Cup winners
• 6 Honours
  • 6.1 National titles
  • 6.2 Europeans titles
  • 6.3 Minor titles
• 7 UEFA Rankings
  • 7.1 Club coefficients
• 8 ACF Fiorentina as a company
• 9 References
• 10 External links

History[edit source | editbeta]

For more details on this topic, see History of ACF Fiorentina.

Foundation to World War II[edit source | editbeta]

Associazione Calcio Fiorentina was founded in the autumn of 1926 by local noble and National Fascist Party member Luigi Ridolfi,^[3]who initiated the merger of two older Florentine clubs, CS Firenze and PG Libertas. The aim of the merger was to give Florence a strong club to rival those of the more dominant Italian Football Championship sides of the time from Northwest Italy. Also influential was the cultural revival and rediscovery of Calcio Fiorentino, an ancestor of modern football that was played by members of the Medici family.^[3]

After a rough start and three seasons in lower leagues, Fiorentina reached the Serie A in 1931. That same year saw the opening of the new stadium, originally named Giovanni Berta, after a prominent fascist, but now known as Stadio Artemio Franchi. At the time, the stadium was a masterpiece of engineering, and its inauguration was monumental. In order to be able to compete with the best teams in Italy, Fiorentina strengthened their team with some new players, notably the Uruguayan Pedro Petrone, nicknamed el Artillero. Despite enjoying a good season and finishing in fourth place, Fiorentina were relegated the following year, although they would return quickly to Serie A. In 1941 they won their first Coppa Italia, but the team were unable to build on their success during the 1940s because of World War II and other troubles.

First scudetto and '50–'60s[edit source | editbeta]

The first Italian champion Fiorentina

In 1950, Fiorentina started to achieve consistent top-five finishes in the domestic league. The team consisted of great players such as well-known goalkeeper Giuliano Sarti, Sergio Cervato, Francesco Rosella, Guido Gratton, Giuseppe Chiappella and Aldo Scaramucci but above all, the attacking duo of Brazilian Julinho and Argentinian Miguel Montuori. This team won Fiorentina's firstscudetto (Italian championship) in 1955–56, 12 points ahead of second-place Milan. Milan beat Fiorentina to top spot the following year, but more significantly Fiorentina became the first Italian team to play in a European Cup final, when a disputed penalty led to a 2–0 defeat at the hands of by Alfredo Di Stéfano's Real Madrid. Fiorentina were runners-up again in the three subsequent seasons. In the 1960–61 season the club won the Coppa Italia again and was also successful in Europe, winning the first Cup Winners' Cup against Rangers.

After several years of runner-up finishes, Fiorentina dropped away slightly in the 1960s, bouncing from fourth to sixth place, although the club won the Coppa Italia and the Mitropa Cup in 1966.

Second scudetto and '70s[edit source | editbeta]

Giancarlo Antognoni, former captain of Fiorentina

While the 1960s did result in some trophies and good Serie A finishes for Fiorentina, nobody believed that the club could challenge for the title. The 1968–69 season started with Milan as frontrunners, but on match day 7, they lost to Bologna and were overtaken by Gigi Riva's Cagliari. Fiorentina, after an unimpressive start, then moved to the top of the Serie A, but the first half of their season finished with a 2–2 draw againstVarese, leaving Cagliari as outright league leader. The second half of the season was a three-way battle between the three contending teams, Milan, Cagliari, and Fiorentina. Milan fell away, instead focusing their efforts on the European Cup, and it seemed that Cagliari would retain top spot. After Cagliari lost againstJuventus, however, Fiorentina took over at the top. The team then won all of their remaining matches, beating rivals Juve in Turin on the penultimate matchday to seal their second, and last, national title. In the European Cup competition the following year, Fiorentina had some good results, including a win in theSoviet Union against Dynamo Kyiv, but they were eventually knocked out in the quarter-finals after a 3–0 defeat in Glasgow to Celtic.

Viola players began the 1970s decade with Scudetto sewed on their breast, but the period was not especially fruitful for the team. After a fifth place finish in 1971, they finished in mid-table almost every year, even flirting with relegation in 1972 and 1978. The Viola did win the Anglo-Italian League Cup in 1974 and won the Coppa Italia again in 1975. The team consisted of young talents like Vincenzo Guerini and Moreno Roggi, who had the misfortune to suffer bad injuries, and above all Giancarlo Antognoni, who would later become an idol to Fiorentina's fans. The young average age of the players led to the team being called Fiorentina Ye-Ye.

Pontello era[edit source | editbeta]

The new team logo of the period

In 1980, Fiorentina was bought by Flavio Pontello, who came from a rich house-building family. He quickly changed the team's anthem and logo, leading to some complaints by the fans, but he started to bring in high-quality players such as Francesco Graziani and Eraldo Pecci from Torino; Daniel Bertoni from Sevilla FC;Daniele Massaro from Monza; and a young Pietro Vierchowod from Sampdoria. The team was built around Giancarlo Antognoni, and in 1982, Fiorentina were involved in an exciting duel with rivals Juventus. After a bad injury to Antognoni, the league title was decided on the final day of the season when Fiorentina were denied a goal against Cagliari and were unable to win. Juventus won the title with a disputed penalty and the rivalry between the two teams erupted.

The following years were strange for Fiorentina, who vacillated between high finishes and relegation battles. Fiorentina also bought two interesting players, El Puntero Ramón Díaz and, most significantly, the youngRoberto Baggio.

In 1990, Fiorentina fought to avoid relegation right up until the final day of the season, but did reach the UEFA Cup final, where they again faced Juventus. The Turin team won the trophy, but Fiorentina's tifosi once again had real cause for complaint: the second leg of the final was played in Avellino (Fiorentina's home ground was suspended), a city with a lot of Juventus' fans, and emerging star Roberto Baggio was sold to the rival team on the day of the final. Pontello, suffering from economic difficulties, was selling all the players and was forced to leave the club after serious riots in Florence's streets. The club was then acquired by the famous filmmaker Mario Cecchi Gori.

Cecchi Gori era: from Champions League to bankruptcy[edit source | editbeta]

Gabriel Batistuta, the most prominent Fiorentina player of the 1990s

The first season under Cecchi Gori's ownership was one of stabilization, after which the new chairman started to sign some good players like Brian Laudrup, Stefan Effenberg, Francesco Baiano and, most importantly,Gabriel Batistuta, who became an iconic player for the team during the 1990s. In 1993, however, Cecchi Gori died and was succeeded as chairman by his son, Vittorio. Despite a good start to the season, Cecchi Gori fired the coach, Luigi Radice, after a defeat against Atalanta,^[4] and replaced him with Aldo Agroppi. The results were dreadful: Fiorentina fell into the bottom half of the standings and were relegated on the last day of the season.

Claudio Ranieri was brought in as coach for the 1993–94 season, and that year, Fiorentina dominated Serie B, Italy's second division. Upon their return to Serie A, Ranieri put together a good team centred around new top scorer Batistuta, signing the young talent Rui Costa from Benfica and the new world champion Brazilian defender Márcio Santos. The former became an idol to Fiorentina fans, while the second disappointed and was sold after only a season. The Viola finished the season in 10th place.

The following season, Cecchi Gori bought other important players, namely Stefan Schwarz. The club again proved its mettle in cup competitions, winning the Coppa Italia against Atalanta and finishing joint-third in Serie A. In the summer, Fiorentina became the first non-national champions to win the Supercoppa Italiana, defeating Milan 2–1 at the San Siro.

Fiorentina's 1995–96 season was disappointing in the league, but they did reach the Cup Winners' Cup semi-final by beating Gloria Bistrita, Sparta Prague, and Benfica. The team lost the semi-final to the eventual winner of the competition, FC Barcelona (Away 1–1, Home 0–2). The season's main signings were Luís Oliveira and Andrei Kanchelskis, the latter of whom suffered a lot of injuries.

At the end of the season, Ranieri left Fiorentina for Valencia CF in Spain and Cecchi Gori appointed Alberto Malesani. Fiorentina played well but struggled against smaller teams, although they did manage to qualify for the UEFA Cup. Malesani left Fiorentina after only a season and was succeeded by Giovanni Trapattoni. With Trapattoni's expert guidance and Batistuta's goals, Fiorentina challenged for the title in 1998–99 but finished the season in third, earning them qualification for the Champions League. The following year was disappointing in Serie A, but Viola played some historical matches in the Champions League, beating Arsenal 1–0 at the old Wembley Stadium andManchester United 2–0 in Florence. They were ultimately eliminated in the second group stage.

At the end of the season, Trapattoni left the club and was replaced by Turkish coach Fatih Terim. More significantly, however, Batistuta was sold to Roma, who eventually won the title the following year. Fiorentina played well in 2000–01 and stayed in the top half of Serie A, despite the resignation of Terim and the arrival of Roberto Mancini. They also won the Coppa Italia for the sixth and last time.

The year 2001 heralded major changes for Fiorentina, as the terrible state of the club's finances was revealed: they were unable to pay wages and had debts of around USD 50 million. The club's owner, Vittorio Cecchi Gori, was able to raise some more money, but even this soon proved to be insufficient resources to sustain the club. Fiorentina were relegated at the end of the 2001–02 season and went into judicially controlled administration in June 2002. This form of bankruptcy (sports companies cannot exactly fail in this way in Italy, but they can suffer a similar procedure) meant that the club was refused a place in Serie B for the 2002–03 season, and as a result effectively ceased to exist.

The 2000s: Della Valle era[edit source | editbeta]

The club was promptly re-established in August 2002 as Associazione Calcio Fiorentina e Florentia Viola with shoe and leather entrepreneur Diego Della Valle as new owner and the club was admitted into Serie C2, the fourth tier of Italian football. The only player to remain at the club in its new incarnation was Angelo Di Livio, whose commitment to club's cause further endeared him to the fans. Helped by Di Livio and 30-goal striker Christian Riganò, the club won its Serie C2 group with considerable ease, which would normally have led to a promotion to Serie C1. Due to the bizarre Caso Catania (Catania Case), however, the club skipped Serie C1 and was admitted into Serie B, something that was only made possible by the Italian Football Federation's decision to resolve the Catania situation by increasing the number of teams in Serie B from 20 to 24 and promoting Fiorentina for "sports merits."^[5] In the 2003 off-season, the club also bought back the right to use the Fiorentina name and the famous shirt design, and re-incorporated itself as ACF Fiorentina. The club finished the2003–04 season in sixth place and won the playoff against Perugia to return to top-flight football.

Cesare Prandelli, the club's longest-serving manager (2005–2010)

In their first season back in Serie A, however, the club struggled to avoid relegation, only securing survival on the last day of the season on head-to-head record against Bologna and Parma. In 2005, Della Valle decided to appoint Pantaleo Corvino as new sports director, followed by the appointment of Cesare Prandelli as head coach in the following season. The club made several signings during the summer transfer market, most notably Luca Toni and Sébastien Frey. This drastic move earned them a fourth place finish with 74 points and a Champions League qualifying round ticket. Toni scored 31 goals in 38 appearances, the first player to pass the 30-goal mark since Antonio Valentin Angelillo in the 1958–59 season, for which he was awarded the European Golden Boot. On 14 July 2006, however, Fiorentina were relegated to Serie B due to their involvement in the 2006 Serie A match fixing scandal and given a 12-point penalty. The team was reinstated to the Serie A on appeal, but with a 19-point penalty for the 2006–07 season. The team's UEFA Champions League place was also rescinded.^[6] After the start of the season, Fiorentina's penalization was reduced from 19 points to 15 on appeal to the Italian courts. In spite of this penalty, they managed to secure a place in the UEFA Cup.

Despite Toni's departure to Bayern Munich, Fiorentina had a strong start to the 2007–08 season and were tipped by Italian national team coach Marcello Lippi, among others, as a surprise challenger for the Scudetto,^[7] and although this form tailed off towards the middle of the season, the Viola managed to qualify for the Champions League. In Europe, the club reached the semi-final of the UEFA Cup, where they were ultimately defeated by Rangers on penalties. The 2008–09 season continued this success, a fourth place finish assuring Fiorentina's spot in 2010's Champions League playoffs. Their European campaign was also similar to that of the previous run, relegated to the 2008–09 UEFA Cup and were eliminated by AFC Ajax in the end.

In the 2009–10 season, Fiorentina started their domestic campaign strongly before steadily losing momentum and slipped to mid-table positions at the latter half of the season. In Europe, the team proved to be a surprise dark horse: after losing their first away fixture againstOlympique Lyonnais, they staged a comeback with a five-match streak by winning all their remaining matches (including defeatingLiverpool home and away). The Viola qualified as group champions, but eventually succumbed to Bayern Munich due to the away goals rule. This was controversial due to a mistaken refereeing decision by Tom Henning Øvrebø, who allowed a clearly-offside goal for Bayern in the first leg. Bayern eventually finished the tournament as runners-up, making a deep run all the way to the final. The incident called into attention the possible implementation of video replays in football. Despite a good European run and reaching the semi-finals in the Coppa Italia, Fiorentina failed to qualify for Europe.

During this period, on 24 September 2009, Andrea Della Valle resigned from his position as Chairman of Fiorentina, and announced all duties would be temporarily transferred to Mario Cognini, Fiorentina's Vice-President until a permanent position could be filled.^[8]

The 2010s: Post-Prandelli Era[edit source | editbeta]

In June 2010, the Viola bid farewell to long-time manager Prandelli (by then the longest-serving coach in the team's history), who was departing to coach the Italian national team. Catania's young Siniša Mihajlović was appointed to replace him. Come the 2010–11 Serie A, despite not having the distraction of a European competition, Fiorentina spent the early weeks of the season in last place. This season was plagued with a widespread injury problems that saw most of the starting XI sidelined for significant portions of the year, particularly first-choice goalkeeper Sébastien Frey, who ended his season early, and star man Stevan Jovetić, who missed the season entirely. The team's form later improved and the Viola finished ninth.

In spite of pressures, Mihajlović remained at the helm for the 2011–12 season. At this point pillars from the Prandelli era were allowed to leave, including Adrian Mutu and Sébastien Frey. With these apparent signs of decline, coupled with mediocre performances in the league, pressures were again mounting, as the club looked no closer of achieving the immediate post-Prandelli objective of returning to Europe. Following a 1–0 defeat to Chievoin November, Mihajlović was sacked and replaced by Delio Rossi.^[9]

Supporters warmed to Rossi, but after a brief period of improvements, the Viola was again dragged down to battle the relegation dogfights. By early 2012, the team had also lost striker Alberto Gilardino and sporting director Pantaleo Corvino—the latter was sacked following a 0–5 home defeat to Juventus. With top player Riccardo Montolivo set to leave on a Bosman in the summer, Fiorentina steadily moved away from their 2009 side. Despite poor records, their bid for survival was kept alive by a number of upset victories away from home, particularly at Roma and Milan—the latter was significant as it allowed Juventus to leapfrog Milan to the top of the table, where they remained for the remainder of the season. The lowest point of the campaign was the home game against Novara: trailing 0–2 within half an hour, manager Rossi decided to substitute midfielder Adem Ljajić early. The latter sarcastically applauded him in frustration, but Rossi retaliated by physical assault. Montolivo's second-half brace salvaged a point by making it 2–2, and the team was faced with needing one point to avoid the drop with only two matches to go. Despite the obvious crisis that would have resulted in firing a manager at this delicate stage, the club was forced to sack Rossi following the Ljajić incident.^[10] In the next match away at Lecce (who were also battling relegation), Fiorentina secured survival under caretaker manager Vincenzo Guerini by winning it 1–0 courtesy of a lone Alessio Cerci goal. They finished thirteenth.

2012–13 season[edit source | editbeta]

Current manager Vincenzo Montella

To engineer a resurrection, the Della Valle family invested heavily in the summer of 2012. Sporting directorDaniele Prade, appointed earlier as Corvino's successor, staged a major overhaul of the team's roster. Arrivals of particular note were new coach Vincenzo Montella, goalkeeper Emiliano Viviano, and a quartet of playmakers: Matías Fernández, Borja Valero, Alberto Aquilani, and David Pizarro. The scale of the turnaround was so large that 17 out of the 26 senior players were new players, 9 of which are among the starting XI. By the end of the transfer window, only two players, Jovetić and Manuel Pasqual, remained from the Champions League class of 2009.

The effects were immediate, as the Florentine side raced out of the gates, finishing the calendar year in joint third place. The January transfer window saw them secure the services of Villarreal CF strikerGiuseppe Rossi, the third Villarreal player signed during the season.^[11] They finished the season in fourth place, agonizingly close to the final Champions League spot, which was won on the final day by Milan. La Viola will however compete in the 2013–14 UEFA Europa League, and have high hopes for improving on their impressive maiden season under Vincenzo Montella.

2013–14 season[edit source | editbeta]

So far during the summer of 2013 Fiorentina have continued strengthening the squad, adding former Spanish international Joaquín from Málaga, as well as Marcos Alonso, another Spaniard, from English Championship club Bolton Wanderers. La Viola also added Oleksandr Yakovenko from Belgian club Anderlecht, Marko Bakić from Torino and Gustavo Munúa fromLevante. Returning from loans are Mattia Cassani, Juan Manuel Vargas, and Rubén Olivera. Fiorentina also signed star striker Mario Gómez from Bayern Munich for €20 million, while losing Stevan Jovetić to Premier League club Manchester City. Luca Toni also left the club, for Serie A newcomers Hellas Verona. Haris Seferović was sold to Real Sociedad in La Liga.

Fiorentina will start their Europa League campaign in the play-off round, having finished 4th in Serie A the previous season.

Players[edit source | editbeta]

Current squad[edit source | editbeta]

As of 28 August 2013^[12]

Note: Flags indicate national team as has been defined under FIFA eligibility rules. Players may hold more than one non-FIFA nationality.

No. Position Player 1 GK Neto 2 DF Gonzalo Rodríguez 3 DF Marcos Alonso 4 DF Facundo Roncaglia 5 DF Marvin Compper 6 DF Ahmed Hegazy 7 MF David Pizarro 8 MF Marko Bakić 9 FW Ante Rebić 10 MF Alberto Aquilani 11 MF Juan Cuadrado 12 GK Cristiano Lupatelli 14 MF Matías Fernández 15 DF Stefan Savić 17 MF Joaquín

No. Position Player 18 MF Matías Vecino 20 MF Borja Valero 21 MF Massimo Ambrosini 23 DF Manuel Pasqual (Captain) 27 MF Rafał Wolski 30 FW Ryder Matos 33 FW Mario Gómez 40 DF Nenad Tomović 49 FW Giuseppe Rossi 66 MF Juan Manuel Vargas 72 MF Josip Iličić 77 FW Oleksandr Yakovenko 78 GK Gustavo Munúa 83 MF Rubén Olivera

Out on loan[edit source | editbeta]

Note: Flags indicate national team as has been defined under FIFA eligibility rules. Players may hold more than one non-FIFA nationality.

No. Position Player DF Michele Camporese (at Cesena) DF Paolo Rozzio (at Pisa) DF Lorenzo De Silvestri (at Sampdoria) DF Cristiano Piccini (at Livorno) DF Nii Nortey Ashong (at Spezia) DF Mattia Cassani (at Parma) MF Boadu Maxwell Acosty (at Chievo)

No. Position Player MF Rômulo (at F.C.Verona) MF Andrea Lazzari (at Udinese) MF Francesco Di Tacchio (at Virtus Entella) MF Amidu Salifu (at Modena) FW Khouma Babacar (at Modena) FW Kenneth Zohore (at Brøndby) FW Mounir El Hamdaoui (at Malaga)

Reserve Team[edit source | editbeta]

Note: Flags indicate national team as has been defined under FIFA eligibility rules. Players may hold more than one non-FIFA nationality.

No. Position Player 24 GK Luca Lezzerini 31 MF Leonardo Capezzi

No. Position Player 34 DF Lorenzo Venuti

Notable players[edit source | editbeta]

Main article: List of ACF Fiorentina players

Managerial history[edit source | editbeta]

Fiorentina have had many managers and head coaches throughout their history. Below is a chronological list from the club's foundation in 1926 to the present day.^[13]

Name Nationality Years Károly Csapkay 1926–28 Károly Csapkay Gyula Feldmann 1928–30 Gyula Feldmann 1930–31 Hermann Felsner 1931–33 William Rady 1933 József Ging 1933–34 Guido Ara 1934–37 Ottavio Baccani 1937–38 Ferenc Molnar 1938 Rudolf Soutschek 1938–39 Giuseppe Galluzzi 1939–45 Guido Ara 1946 Renzo Magli 1946–47 Imre Senkey 1947 Luigi Ferrero 1947–51 Renzo Magli 1951–53 Fulvio Bernardini 1953–58 Lajos Czeizler 1958–59 Luigi Ferrero 1959 Luis Carniglia 1959–60 Giuseppe Chiappella 1960 Nándor Hidegkuti 1960–62

Name Nationality Years Ferruccio Valcareggi 1962–64 Giuseppe Chiappella 1964–67 Luigi Ferrero 1967–68 Andrea Bassi 1968 Bruno Pesaola 1968–71 Oronzo Pugliese 1971 Nils Liedholm 1971–73 Luigi Radice 1973–74 Nereo Rocco 1974–75 Carlo Mazzone 1975–77 Mario Mazzoni 1977–78 Giuseppe Chiappella 1978 Paolo Carosi 1978–81 Giancarlo De Sisti 1981–85 Ferruccio Valcareggi 1985 Aldo Agroppi 1985–86 Eugenio Bersellini 1986–87 Sven-Göran Eriksson July 1987–June 89 Bruno Giorgi 1989–90 Francesco Graziani 1990 Sebastião Lazaroni July 1990–June 92 Luigi Radice 1991–93 Aldo Agroppi 1993

Name Nationality Years Luciano Chiarugi 1993 Claudio Ranieri July 1993–June 97 Alberto Malesani July 1997–June 98 Giovanni Trapattoni July 1998–June 00 Fatih Terim July 2000–Feb 01 Luciano Chiarugi 2001 Roberto Mancini Feb 2001–Dec 01 Ottavio Bianchi Jan 2002–March 2 Luciano Chiarugi 2002 Eugenio Fascetti June 2002–July 2 Pietro Vierchowod 2002 Alberto Cavasin Oct 2002–Feb 04 Emiliano Mondonico Feb 2004–Oct 04 Sergio Buso Oct 2004–Jan 05 Dino Zoff Jan 2005–June 5 Cesare Prandelli July 2005–June 10 Siniša Mihajlović June 2010–Nov 11 Delio Rossi Nov 2011–May 12 Vincenzo Guerini May 2012–June 12 Vincenzo Montella June 2012–

Club strip[edit source | editbeta]

Badge[edit source | editbeta]

The badge used by Florentia Viola

The official emblem of the city of Florence, a red fleur-de-lis on a white field, has been pivotal in the all-round symbolism of the club.

Over the course of the club's history, they have had several badge changes, all of which incorporated Florence's fleur-de-lis in some way.^[14] The first one was nothing more than the city's coat of arms, a white shield with the red fleur-de-lis inside. It was soon changed to a very stylized fleur-de-lis, always red, and sometimes even without the white field. The most common symbol, adopted for about twenty years, had been a white lozenge with the flower inside. During the season they were Italian champions, the lozenge disappeared and the flower was overlapped with the scudetto.

The logo introduced by owner Flavio Pontello in 1980 was particularly distinct, consisting of one-half of the city of Florence's emblem and one-half of the letter "F", for Fiorentina. People disliked it when it was introduced, believing it was a commercial decision and, above all, because the symbol bore more of a resemblance to a halberd than a fleur-de-lis.^[14]

Today's logo is a kite shaped double lozenge bordered in gold. The outer lozenge has a purple background with the letters "AC" in white and the letter "F" in red, standing for the club's name. The inner lozenge is white with a gold border and the red fleur-de-lis of Florence.^[14]This logo had been in use from 1992 to 2002, but after the financial crisis and resurrection of the club the new one couldn't use the same logo. Florence's comune instead granted Florentia Viola use of the stylized coat of arms used in other city documents. Diego Della Valle acquired the current logo the following year in a judicial auction for a fee of €2.5 million, making it the most expensive logo in Italian football.

Kit and colours[edit source | editbeta]

When Fiorentina was founded in 1926, the players wore red and white halved shirts derived from the colour of the city emblem.^[15] The more well-known and highly distinctive purple kit was adopted in 1928 and has been used ever since, giving rise to the nickname La Viola("The Purple (team)"). Tradition has it that Fiorentina got their purple kit by mistake after an accident washing the old red and white coloured kits in the river.^[16]

The away kit has always been predominantly white, sometimes with purple and red elements, sometimes all-white. The shorts had been purple when the home kit was with white shorts. Fiorentina's third kit was first one in the 1995–96 season and it was all-red with purple borders and two lilies on the shoulders. The red shirt has been the most worn 3rd shirt by Fiorentina, although they also wore rare yellow shirts ('97–'98, '99–'00 and '10–'11) and a sterling version, mostly in the Coppa Italia, in 2000–01.

Kit evolution[edit source | editbeta]

1926

1929–1983

1983–87

1991–Present Florentia Viola year

World Cup winners[edit source | editbeta]

•  Mario Pizziolo (Italy 1934)
•  Giancarlo Antognoni (Spain 1982)
•  Francesco Graziani (Spain 1982)
•  Giovanni Galli (Spain 1982)
•  Pietro Vierchowod (Spain 1982)
•  Daniele Massaro (Spain 1982)
•  Daniel Passarella (Mexico 1986)
•  Luca Toni (Germany 2006)
•  Alberto Gilardino (Germany 2006)

Honours[edit source | editbeta]

National titles[edit source | editbeta]

Serie A:

• Winners (2) : 1955–56; 1968–69
• Runners-up (5): 1956–57; 1957–58; 1958–59; 1959–60; 1981–82

Coppa Italia:

• Winners (6) : 1939–40; 1960–61; 1965–66; 1974–75; 1995–96; 2000–01
• Runners-up (3): 1958, 1959–60, 1998–99

Supercoppa Italiana:

• Winners (1) : 1996
• Runners-up (1): 2001

Europeans titles[edit source | editbeta]

Champions League:

• Runners-up (1): 1956–57

UEFA Cup Winners' Cup:

• Winners (1) : 1960–61^[17]
• Runners-up (1): 1961–62

UEFA Cup/ UEFA Europa League:

• Runners-up (1): 1989–90

Minor titles[edit source | editbeta]

Mitropa Cup

• Winners (1) : 1966

Anglo-Italian League Cup

• Winners (1) : 1975

Serie B

• Winners: 1930–31; 1938–39; 1993–94

Serie C2 (as Florentia Viola)

• Winners: 2002–03

UEFA Rankings[edit source | editbeta]

Club coefficients[edit source | editbeta]

This is the UEFA club's coefficient as of 25 July 2013:^[18]

Rank	Team	Coefficient
55	APOEL	34.675
56	Spartak Moscow	34.516
57	BATE Borisov	33.650
58	Fiorentina	33.321
59	Beşiktaş	33.240
60	Steaua București	33.026
61	Celtic	31.838

ACF Fiorentina as a company[edit source | editbeta]

ACF Fiorentina S.p.A.

Revenue	€67,076,953 (2011)
Operating income	(€49,772,471) (2011)
Net income	(€32,474,084) (2011)
Total assets	€156,972,324 (2011)
Total equity	€50,612,014 (2011)
Owner(s)	Diego Della Valle & C. Sapa (98.98%) Andrea Della Valle (1.02%)
Parent	Diego Della Valle & C. Sapa
Subsidiaries	Campus Viola srl Firenze Viola srl Promesse Viola srl

Since re-established in 2002, ACF Fiorentina S.p.A. yet to self-sustain in order to keep the team in top division as well as in European competitions. In the 2005 financial year, the club made a net loss of €9,159,356, followed by a net loss of €19,519,789. In 2006 (2005–06 Serie A and 2006–07 Serie A), Fiorentina heavily invested on players, made the amortization of intangible asset (the player contract) had increased from €17.7 million to €24 million.^[19]However the club suffered from 2006 Italian football scandal, meant the club did not qualify for Europe. In 2007 Fiorentina almost break-even, with a net loss of just €3,704,953. In 2007 financial year the TV revenue increased after qualified to 2007–08 UEFA Cup.^[20] Despite qualified to 2008–09 UEFA Champions League, Fiorentina made a net loss of €9,179,484 in 2008 financial year after the increase in TV revenue was outweighed by the increase in wage.^[21] In the 2009 financial year, Fiorentina made a net profit of €4,442,803, largely due to the profit on selling players (€33,631,489 from players such as Felipe Melo, Giampaolo Pazzini and Zdravko Kuzmanovic; increased from about €3.5 million in 2008). However it also offset by the write-down of selling players (€6,062,545, from players such as Manuel da Costa, Arturo Lupoli and Davide Carcuro).^[22]

After the club failed to qualify to Europe at the end of 2009–10 Serie A, as well as lack of player profit, Fiorentina turnover was decreased from €140,040,713 in 2009 to just €79,854,928, despite wage bill also fell, la Viola still made a net loss of €9,604,353.^[23][24] In the 2011 financial year, the turnover slipped to €67,076,953, as the club's lack of capital gains from selling players and 2010 financial year still included the instalments from UEFA for participating 2009–10 UEFA Europa League. Furthermore, the gate income had dropped from €11,070,385 to €7,541,260. The wage bill did not fall much and in reverse the amortization of transfer fee had sightly increased due to new signing. La Viola had saving in other cost but counter-weighted by huge €11,747,668 write-down for departed players, due to D'Agostino, Frey and Mutu, but the former would counter-weight by co-ownership financial income, which all made the operating cost remained high as worse as last year. Moreover in 2010 the result was boosted by acquiring the asset from subsidiary (related to AC Fiorentina) and the re-valuation of its value in separate balance sheet. If deducting that income (€14,737,855), 2010 financial year was net loss 24,342,208 and 2011 result was worsen €8,131,876 only in separate balance sheet.^[25][26]

ACF Fiorentina re-capitalized in 2006, for €34.7 million.^[19] In the next year la Viola re-capitalized €20 million^[20] and €20M again in 2008.^[21] In 2009 Fiorentina re-capitalized for €10 million only^[22] and did not had a re-capitalization in 2010 and 2011 financial year.

References[edit source | editbeta]

1. ^ Jump up to:^a b "Organigramma" (in Italian). ACF Fiorentina. Retrieved 29 November 2009.
2. ^ Jump up to:^a b "Fiorentina" (in Italian). Lega Calcio. Archived from the original on 25 February 2009. Retrieved 18 February 2009.
3. ^ Jump up to:^a b Martin, Simon. Football and Fascism: The National Game Under Mussolini. Berg Publishers. ISBN 1-85973-705-6.
4. Jump up^ From Corriere della Sera of 5 January 1993
5. Jump up^ "Serie B a 24 squadre. C'è anche la Fiorentina" (in Italian). La Repubblica. 20 August 2003. Archived from the original on 1 May 2008. Retrieved 4 April 2008.
6. Jump up^ BBC (14 July 2006). "Italian trio relegated to Serie B". BBC News. Retrieved 1 January 2010.
7. Jump up^ "Lippi Tips Fiorentina For Surprise Scudetto Challenge". Goal.com. 11 November 2007.
8. Jump up^ "Fiorentina senza presidente Della Valle si è dimesso" (in Italian). La Gazzetta dello Sport. 24 September 2009.
9. Jump up^ "Mihajlovic sacked as Fiorentina coach". CNN.com. 7 November 2011.
10. Jump up^ "Fiorentina boss Delio Rossi sacked for attacking player". BBC Sport. 3 May 2012.
11. Jump up^ "Rossi completes move to Fiorentina". FOX Sports. 4 January 2012.
12. Jump up^ http://it.violachannel.tv/rosa-2012-2013.html
13. Jump up^ "geocities.com/violaequipe". Viola.^{[dead link]}
14. ^ Jump up to:^a b c "ACF Fiorentina". Weltfussballarchiv.com. 24 June 2007.
15. Jump up^ "Stemma Comune di Firenze". Comuni-Italiani. 24 June 2007.
16. Jump up^ "Perchè a Firenze hanno una maglia color viola, che in tutta Italia è il colore del lutto?". Yahoo.it. 24 June 2007.
17. Jump up^ UEFA.com. "1960/61: Fiorentina hold off Rangers' brave challenge".
18. Jump up^ [1]
19. ^ Jump up to:^a b ACF Fiorentina Report and Accounts on 31 December 2006(Italian)
20. ^ Jump up to:^a b ACF Fiorentina Report and Accounts on 31 December 2007(Italian)
21. ^ Jump up to:^a b ACF Fiorentina Report and Accounts on 31 December 2008(Italian)
22. ^ Jump up to:^a b ACF Fiorentina Report and Accounts on 31 December 2009(Italian)
23. Jump up^ ACF Fiorentina Report and Accounts on 31 December 2010(Italian)
24. Jump up^ "Bilancio Fiorentina 2010: in perdita, nonostante la cessione del ramo commerciale". ju29ro.com (in Italian). 6 September 2011. Retrieved 4 March 2012.
25. Jump up^ "Bilancio Fiorentina 2011: perdita da rendimento sportivo" (in Italian). Ju29ro.com. 7 June 2012. Retrieved 13 June 2012.
26. Jump up^ ACF Fiorentina SpA Report and Accounts on 31 December 2011 (Italian)

External links[edit source | editbeta]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: ACF Fiorentina

• Official website (Italian)
• Team page at Goal.com
• Team page at ESPN Soccernet
• Team Page at Football-Lineups.com

Preceded by initial winners

UEFA Cup Winners Cup Winners 1960–61

Succeeded by Atlético Madrid

[show] v   t   e ACF Fiorentina

[show] v   t   e 2013–14 UEFA Europa League

[show] v   t   e Serie A

[show] v   t   e Football in Italy

[show] v   t   e UEFA Cup Winners' Cup winners

[show] v   t   e Original Italian Serie B clubs, 1929–30

Categories: 

• ACF Fiorentina
• Football clubs in Italy
• Football clubs in Tuscany
• Association football clubs established in 1926
• Serie A clubs
• Serie B clubs
• Lega Pro Seconda Divisione clubs
• Scudetto winners
• Coppa Italia winners
• 1926 establishments in Italy

Navigation menu

• Create account
• Log in

• Article
• Talk

• Read
• Edit source
• Editbeta
• View history

• Main page
• Contents
• Featured content
• Current events
• Random article
• Donate to Wikipedia

Interaction

• Help
• About Wikipedia
• Community portal
• Recent changes
• Contact page

Toolbox

Print/export

Languages

• العربية
• Azərbaycanca
• Беларуская (тарашкевіца)‎
• Български
• Bosanski
• Català
• Česky
• Dansk
• Deutsch
• Eesti
• Ελληνικά
• Español
• Euskara
• فارسی
• Français
• Gaeilge
• Galego
• 한국어
• Հայերեն
• Hrvatski
• Bahasa Indonesia
• Italiano
• עברית
• Latina
• Magyar
• Македонски
• Malti
• Nederlands
• 日本語
• Napulitano
• Norsk bokmål
• Norsk nynorsk
• Occitan
• Polski
• Português
• Română
• Rumantsch
• Runa Simi
• Русский
• Shqip
• Sicilianu
• Simple English
• Slovenčina
• Slovenščina
• کوردی
• Српски / srpski
• Srpskohrvatski / српскохрватски
• Suomi
• Svenska
• ไทย
• Türkçe
• Українська
• Vèneto
• Tiếng Việt
• Zazaki
• 中文
• Edit links

• This page was last modified on 15 September 2013 at 01:34.
• Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
  Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.

• Privacy policy
• About Wikipedia
• Disclaimers
• Contact Wikipedia
• Developers
• Mobile view

• 
• 

粵語
Zazaki
Zeêuws
Žemaitėška
中文
Edit links
This page was last modified on 13 September 2013 at 23:44.
Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.
Privacy policyAbout WikipediaDisclaimersContact WikipediaDevelopersMobile viewWikimedia Foundation Powered by MediaWiki