Land area: 3,537,418 sq mi (9,161,923 sq km); total area: 3,718,711 sq mi (9,631,418 sq km)

Population (2006): 298,444,215 (growth rate: 0.9%); birth rate: 14.1/1000; infant mortality rate: 6.4/1000; life expectancy: 77.8; density per sq mi: 84

Capital City: Washington, DC

Monetary unit: Dollar

Languages: English, sizable Spanish-speaking minority

Ethnicity/race: White: 211,460,626 (75.1%); Black: 34,658,190 (12.3%); Asian: 10,242,998 (3.6%); American Indian and Alaska Native: 2,475,956 (0.9%); Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander: 398,835 (0.1%); other race: 15,359,073 (5.5%); Hispanic origin:1 35,305,818 (12.5%)

Religions: Protestant 56%; Roman Catholic 28%; Jewish 2%; other 4%; none 10% (1989)

The United States is the world's third largest country in population and the fourth largest country in area. It consists of 50 states and a federal district. United States (excluding Alaska and Hawaii) stretches across central North America from the Atlantic Ocean on the east to the Pacific Ocean on the west, and from Canada on the north to Mexico and the Gulf of Mexico on the south. Washington, D.C. is the capital of the United States, and New York is its largest city.

The terrain of the United States was formed by the great continental ice sheets that covered N North America during the late Cenozoic Era (see Geological Time).

Modern American culture is predominantly influenced by the mass media. Radio, television, films, the Internet and big multi-national companies have invented, packaged and enticed the consumers to live their lifestyle in a certain way.

What religion and politics were to defining the essence of what it meant to be an American until the end of the 1800s, cinema and television are to the 20th century. For most of this century Hollywood has been searing every national dream, making movies the public subconscious. The global distribution of American movies and TV shows has shaped the world's perception of the country to such a degree that audiences worldwide find New York's underbelly and LA's palm-studded boulevards as recognizable as their own backyards.

When we think of US cities, we think of skyscrapers. Chicago, with buildings like the Manhattan Building and the Tribune and Sears towers, is a living museum of high-rise development. New York boasts some of the more impressive sky-scrapers, including the Flatiron Building; King Kong's perch, the Empire State Building; and the Art Deco Chrysler Building.

During the colonial period and the early years of the US, American architecture mainly followed the trends of British architecture. The first true American contribution to international architecture was the metal-framed skyscraper, pioneered in Chicago in the late 19th century by architects such as Louis Henry Sullivan. Frank Lloyd Wright, who began his career in Sullivan’s office, is perhaps the best-known US architect.

Subsequent developments in US architecture incorporated European modernism to produce the box-shaped, glass-curtain-wall skyscraper common in US cities from the 1950s until the 1980s, and first exemplified by the Secretariat Building of the United Nations (UN) in New York City. In the 1980s new forms emerged that borrowed stylistic elements freely and eclectically from various periods in the history of architecture, incorporating them into buildings that also made use of the newest technology. Examples of this postmodern architecture include the AT&T Building in New York City, a skyscraper designed by Philip Johnson, and the Public Office Building by Michael Graves in Portland, Oregon.