| |
The
United State of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising
fifty states, one federal district, and fourteen territories. The
country is situated almost entirely in the western hemisphere: its
forty-eight contiguous states and Washington, D.C., the capital
district, 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, the product of large-scale immigration from almost every
corner of the globe. Its national economy is the world's largest,
with a nominal 2006 gross domestic product (GDP) of more than $13
trillion. |
|
 |
|