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United States
A continental superpower of fifty states and astonishing variety
The United States stretches from the Atlantic seaboard to the Pacific and beyond to Alaska and Hawaii, binding deserts, mountains, prairies, swamps, and megacities into a single federal republic of fifty states. With roughly 340 million people and the largest economy on Earth, it projects unmatched cultural, military, and technological reach. Founded on an experiment in self-government, it remains a restless, contradictory, ceaselessly reinvented nation whose films, music, brands, and ideas circulate to nearly every corner of the planet.
Its physical geography is a catalog of extremes: the forested Appalachians, the vast Mississippi basin and Great Plains, the Rocky Mountains, the arid Southwest and Death Valley, the volcanic Pacific Northwest, and the subarctic wilderness of Alaska, where Denali rises to 6,190 meters. Climates span tropical Florida and Hawaii to Arctic tundra. Tornadoes, hurricanes, wildfires, and earthquakes are recurring features of a country spanning every temperate and many tropical zones.
Independence from Britain came in 1776, followed by westward expansion, a civil war over slavery, industrial ascent, and emergence as a global power across the twentieth century. The modern United States is a services-and-technology economy anchored by finance, software, aerospace, agriculture, and entertainment, with hubs from New York and Washington to Silicon Valley. Deep political divisions, immigration, and its role as a global anchor define its current era.