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The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic made up of fifty states, one federal district, and several territories. The country is situated largely in the western hemisphere: its forty-eight contiguous states and the District of Columbia (coextensive with Washington, the capital) lie in central North America between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, bordered by Canada to the north and Mexico to the south; the state of Alaska is in the northwest of the continent with Canada to its east, and the state of Hawaii is in the mid-Pacific. U.S. territories, or insular areas, are scattered around the Caribbean and Pacific.
At over 3.7 million square miles (over 9.6 million km²) and with more than 300 million people, the United States is the third or fourth largest country by total area, and third largest by land area and population. A liberal democracy, the U.S. is one of the world's most ethnically and socially diverse nations. American society is the product of large-scale immigration and is home to a complex social structure. Its national economy is the world's largest, with a nominal 2005 gross domestic product (GDP) of more than $13 trillion.
The nation was founded by thirteen colonies of Great Britain located along the Atlantic seaboard. The colonies issued the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776; Britain, defeated in the American Revolutionary War, recognized U.S. sovereignty in 1783. The current United States Constitution was adopted on September 17, 1787. Ten amendments composing the Bill of Rights were ratified in 1791, followed by seventeen additional amendments. The country greatly expanded throughout the nineteenth century, acquiring territory from France, Spain, Mexico, and Russia, while annexing the Republic of Texas and the former Kingdom of Hawaii. By the turn of the twentieth century, the United States was a world power. With its development of nuclear weapons, the U.S. emerged from World War II as one of two global superpowers, along with the Soviet Union. The late 1980s Soviet collapse left the United States as the world's sole superpower. It remains a dominant economic, political, military, and cultural force in the Western world and around the globe.
The United States is a diverse and multicultural nation, home to a wide variety of ethnic groups and cultures. The culture held in common among most Americans has evolved from that of colonial Dutch and English settlers. English, German, and Irish cultures and later Italian, Greek, and Eastern European Jewish cultures had a significant influence on modern American culture. Descendants of enslaved West Africans preserved some cultural traditions from West Africa in the early United States. Geographical place names largely reflect the combined English, Dutch, French, German, Spanish, and Native American components of U.S. history.
Drawn to the United States by the American Dream, the notion that the Americans enjoy high levels of social mobility, these immigrant cultures blended together. The effect can be described as a melting pot, immigrants from other cultures bring unique cultural aspects which are incorporated into the larger American culture and adopt features of the mainstream culture. Alternatively, it can also be seen as a salad bowl, in which immigrant cultures retain some of their unique characteristics while culturally intermingling.
The largest cities of the United States figure prominently in the economy, culture, and heritage of the U.S. In 2005, 254 incorporated places in the U.S. had populations greater than 100,000, nine cities had populations greater than one million, and four global cities had populations greater than 2 million (New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston). The United States has 54 metropolitan areas with populations greater than one million. The South Florida metropolitan area (Miami and Ft. Lauderdale) and the Washington Metropolitan Area, (Washington, Baltimore, & Arlington) are among several metropolitan areas that consist of multiple large cities that rank among the largest metropolitan areas while none of their member cities rank in the top ten.
The United States government keeps no official register of Americans' religious status. However, in a private survey conducted in 2001 and mentioned in the Census Bureau's Statistical Abstract of the United States, 76.7 percent of American adults identified themselves as Christian; about 52 percent of adults described themselves as members of various Protestant denominations. Roman Catholics, at 24.5 percent, were the most populous individual denomination. Other faiths in America include Judaism (1.4 percent), Islam (0.5 percent), Buddhism (0.5 percent), Hinduism (0.4 percent) and Unitarian Universalism (0.3 percent). About 14.2 percent of respondents described themselves as having no religion. Although the total U.S. population
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