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1、American Way of LifeThe full name of the United States is the United States of American. Often we just call it the United States, the USA or simple America. There are only 310 million people in the USA today, less than a quarter of the population of China, but there is less cultural coherence in the
2、 USA than in China. The makes it difficult to generalize about the American way of life. Almost all of us think that American way of life is colorful and varied in postures. And, why? We can find some reasons or factors as follow: history, geographical regions, culture, religion and so on. And we ca
3、n find that there are several characteristic of the American way of life.The first reason is the geographical regions. The continental United States lies in central North America with Canada to its north, Mexico and the Gulf of Mexico to its south, the Atlantic Ocean to its east and the Pacific Ocea
4、n to its west. The USA has a land area of 9.3 million square kilometers. It stretches 2575 kilometers from north to south and 4500 kilometers from east to west. It is the fourth largest country in the world is size after Russia, Canada and China. Traditionally from the east to west the United States
5、 can be divided into seven geographical regions. They are New England, the Middle Atlantic States, the Midwest, the south, the Great Plains, Rockies and intermountain region or the American west, the pacific coast and the new states. Because of its wide area, The second and the much important reason
6、 is the history. It is only more than 200 years since the United States won its independence. This does not mean that the history of the United States is too short to be worth discussion. It is true that the country was never ruled over by kings and big feudal nobles who filled up the history of oth
7、er nations and are talked about almost endlessly. The nation has her history, not so very long, but full of significant contents. It is not a history of replacement of one dynasty by another or a sudden change of rulers resulting from coup dentate. Its not a history of Americans own, a history of ho
8、w the nation came into being, own its impendence. As we know, the USA is a nation of immigrants. The American continents were peopled as a result of two long-continuing immigration movements, the first from Asia, and the second from Europe and Africa. By the early 1760s, the 13 English colonies in N
9、orth America had developed a similar American pattern in politics, economy and cultural life and enjoyed the same frontier environment. The English people and European had become American and they were ready to separate themselves from the old world. The American revelation officially proclaimed the
10、 birth of a new nation of American. And “the war of independence” came into an end in 1781 with the victory of North American. The treaty of Paris was signed n 1783 and Britain had to recognize the independence of the United States. A new American nation was thus born. Because of the history, we can
11、 sure that there are many kinds of culture in America. Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labors and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world. So many American historians believe that the idea of the “melting-pot” was first come into being from he
12、re. What means the melting pot? “The melting pot” is a metaphor that is associated with life in American. It first surfaced in the late 18th century, but gained new currency in the 20th when in 1950 a popular play by that name was first produced by a Jewish playwright named Israel Zangwill. The melt
13、ing pot metaphor implied that, in the new world, all differences would be melted away to from a radically new mixture. But it was wrongly embraced by the wasps (white Anglo-Saxon protestant) which remained dominant until around the middle of the 20th century. The third reason is religion. By the mid
14、dle of the 18th century, many different kinds of Protestants lived in American. In the early year of the American nation, Americans were confident that God supported their experiment in republican government. Some phenomena in American religion are uniquely American. First of all, American with diff
15、erent religion lives together under the same law. Secondly, the religious beliefs of Americans continue to be strong with social progress. Thirdly, in the United States every church is a completely independence organization, and concerned with its own finance and its own building. Most people want t
16、o identify themselves with dominant values, and going freely to the church of ones choice is a way of doing so, and of gaining acceptance in the face a subtle demand for conformity. And the church is a place where people can meet others with whom they would like to make friends. People go to church and it helps them feel that they have a place in a community. But we should know that the idea of “Americans are all religion” is a stereotype. Like most assertions asserting an “all”
