Cities of the USA
Washington, D. C. is the capital city of the United States of America, its political centre. 'D. stands for the 'District of Columbia', the federal district containing the city of Washington. The city is named after George Washington. The centres of all three branches of the US federal government are in Washington, D. C, as well as the headquarters of most federal agencies. Washington also serves as the headquarters for the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the Organisation of the Monetary Fund among other international (and national) institutions. All of this has made Washington the frequent focal point of massive political demonstrations and protests. Washington is also the site of numerous national landmarks, museums, and sports teams, and is a popular destination for tourists.
New York City, officially named the City of New York, is the most populous city in the United States, and the most densely populated city in North America. Located in the state of New York, New York City has a population of 8. 2 million people within an area of 830 km2. It is at the heart of the New York Metropolitan Area, which is one of the largest urban conglomerations in the world. The city comprises five boroughs: the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island.
The city is at the centre of international finance, politics, manufacturing, entertainment, and culture, and is one of the world's major global cities (along with London, Tokyo and Paris). It has a unique collection of museums, galleries, international corporations, and stock exchanges. The city is also home to the United Nations and all of the international missions associated with it.
New York City attracts large numbers of immigrants from over 180 countries, as well as many people from all over the United States, who come to the city for its culture, energy, cosmopolitanism, and by their own hope of making it big. New York City is home to more than 500 companies. If the city were a nation, it would have the 17th highest gross domestic product in the world, more than that of Switzerland and nearly equaling that of Russia.
New York is a city of great museums with the Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection of historic art, the Museum of Modern Art and Guggenheim Museum's 20th century collection, and the American Museum of Natural History and its Hayden Planetarium focusing on the sciences.
Climate and Natural Resources
The United States of America is a very diverse country. Its nature, climate, population varies from the East Coast to the west, from the northern border to the southern.
Climate is mostly temperate, but tropical in Hawaii and Florida, arctic in Alaska, semiarid in the Great Plains west of the Mississippi River, and arid in the southwest.
Natural resources include coal, copper, lead, molybdenum, phosphates, uranium, bauxite, gold, iron, mercury, nickel, silver, tungsten, zinc, petroleum, natural gas, and timber.
Natural hazards are a great deal of problems for the USA. Every year, they loose hundred millions of dollars, because of natural hazards. The USA is famous for hurricanes along the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico coasts and tornadoes in the Midwest and southeast; mud slides in California; forest fires in the west; flooding.
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Sometimes there are tsunamis, volcanoes and earthquakes happen. Earthquakes are very often in California.
Talking about environment, one should add that air pollution results in acid rains in both the US and Canada. The US is the largest single emitter of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.
Water pollution from runoff of pesticides and fertilizers takes place here.
Traditional American Food
Americans eat a lot. They have three meals a day: breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Most of Americans don't eat home but prefer to go to restaurants. They can choose from many kind of restaurants. There is a great number of ethnic restaurants in the United States. Italian, Chinese and Mexican food is very popular. An American institution is the fast food restaurant, which is very convenient but not very healthy.
However there are some principles of American cuisine (if we may call it so). Americans drink a lot of juices and soda, eat a lot of meat, fruits and vegetables, not much bread. In the morning Americans have cereal or scrambled eggs, milk or orange juice.
Chicken or fish, fried potatoes, vegetable salads, and desert: this is the most common menu for lunch. Dinner is probably the most important meal of the day, some people have family dinner, when all members of family have to be there.
For dinner Americans usually have meat, fried or baked potatoes with ketchup or sour cream, corn, peas, sometimes macaroni and cheese or spaghetti; ice-cream, fruit or cake may be for dessert.
Turkey, ham and apple pie are traditional for Christmas and Thanksgiving Day dinners.
Music in the USA
Almost all American composers of note belong to the 20th century, and include such names as Charles Ives, Aaron Copland, Samuel Barber, Roger Sessions and Virgil Thomson. Edgard Varese and John Cage have gained fame as experimental composers.
It is through the development of popular music in the 20th century that the USA has dominated the western world. Jazz, a style of music created at the end of the 19th century by black Americans out of their gospel and blues songs, was being played all over the USA by both black and white musicians by the 1920s, and influenced the development of both dance music and popular songs in the 1930s and 1940s.
After the Second World War jazz and popular music developed in separate directions. Black musicians created a more sophisticated style called bebop. The rhythm and blues music that derived from jazz, combined with aspects of country and western music, developed into rock-n-roll in the 1950s with the music of Bill Haley, Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly and others.
In the 1960s some British groups, especially the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, became internationally famous and for a brief period popular music was dominated by developments in Britain. Since that time, rock has incorporated folk music, soul music has developed, and many social phenomena, such as drug culture, the civil rights movement and the peace movement, have found their expression in rock music.
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The musical has also made an important contribution to popular music. Developing from the British music hall and American vaudeville early in the 20th century, composers such as George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Stephen Sondheim and Leonard Bernstein on Broadway, and Ivor Novello, Noel Coward and more recently Andrew Lloyd Webber in Britain, have made the musical into one of the most important forms of popular music.
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