The United States is an indirect democracy— that is, the people rule through representatives they elect. Over time, the vote has been given to more and more people. In the beginning, only white men with property could vote. Today any citizen who is at least 18 years old can vote. The Constitution The United States […]
Category: USA
Cambridge
The ivy walls of Harvard University Just across the Charles River from Boston is Cambridge, America’s most famous student town. Cambridge is sometimes called the birthplace of American intellectual life: It has the nation’s oldest university, Harvard University, founded in 1636. Cambridge remains a center of intellectual life, especially since it’s also home to MIT, […]
The Nation’s Capital
A view of Washington, D. C. in 1830 (detail) Building a New City With its grand neoclassical buildings and its tree-lined avenues, Washington, D. C. strikes the visitor as a lovely and formal city. Washington wasn’t always this way. When it was decided that the new country needed a new city for its capital, […]
The Indians of the Great Plains
In the Black Hills of South Dakota there are two huge monuments carved from mountains. One is the Mount Rushmore National Monument. It shows the faces of four American presidents: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt. The other is the Crazy Horse Monument. In progress since 1947, it will show the famous […]
Yellowstone National Park
For almost seventy years, no one believed the stories about Yellowstone. The first white person to explore the area was fur trapper John Colter. In 1807, when he described the hot water and steam shooting into the air and the bubbling, boiling pools of mud, people just laughed at him in disbelief. In 1869, members […]