Everything you need to know about the United States
The United States is a federal union of fifty states that write their own laws, so the country changes at a state line about as much as it does at a mountain range. Learn the shape of it across those fifty states and the capital district, the facts that make daily life legible from Boston to Honolulu, the first 101 words of Navajo, Hawaiian or Cherokee, and the civics questions an applicant for citizenship has to answer.
Read it, then make it stick
Geography of the United States
From the Appalachians to the Rockies, explore the mountains, plains and coasts that connect the Atlantic and Pacific. Alaska and Hawaii take the landscape into the Arctic and the tropics.
Know the shape of the country
Three maps of the United States itself, drawn from the same files the rounds are played on. The fifty states and the District of Columbia are the frame everything else sits in; the cities and the rivers, lakes and seas that put most of them where they are go inside it.
Places worth visiting
Essential ยท Canyon
Grand Canyon
Watch sunrise or sunset over the canyon from the South Rim. Hike a little way below the rim to feel its scale.
Pick from the great national parks of the West and the cities and music towns of the East and South. Essential is our shortlist for a first trip, and worth a detour goes further. Select a pin to read about a place, then play the map and find them all.
Study for the United Statesโ citizenship test
The Constitution
The supreme law: what it does, who it speaks for, and how it gets changed.
Take Navajo with you
Greetings and politeness
Hello, please, thank you, sorry: the eleven openers everything else builds on.
Keep going one country deeper
When you have had your fill of the United States, the countries in white have a guide like this one, and every other has maps of its own.
North America
Europe
- Albania
- Andorra
- Armenia
- Austria
- Azerbaijan
- Belarus
- Belgium
- Bosnia and Herzegovina
- Bulgaria
- Croatia
- Cyprus
- Czechia
- Denmark
- Estonia
- Finland
- France
- Georgia
- Germany
- Greece
- Hungary
- Iceland
- Ireland
- Italy
- Kosovo
- Latvia
- Liechtenstein
- Lithuania
- Luxembourg
- Malta
- Moldova
- Monaco
- Montenegro
- Netherlands
- North Macedonia
- Northern Cyprus
- Norway
- Poland
- Portugal
- Romania
- Russia
- San Marino
- Serbia
- Slovakia
- Slovenia
- Spain
- Sweden
- Switzerland
- Tรผrkiye
- Ukraine
- United Kingdom
- Vatican City
Asia
- Afghanistan
- Bahrain
- Bangladesh
- Bhutan
- Brunei
- Cambodia
- China
- India
- Indonesia
- Iran
- Iraq
- Israel
- Japan
- Jordan
- Kazakhstan
- Kuwait
- Kyrgyzstan
- Laos
- Lebanon
- Malaysia
- Maldives
- Mongolia
- Myanmar
- Nepal
- North Korea
- Oman
- Pakistan
- Palestine
- Philippines
- Qatar
- Saudi Arabia
- Singapore
- South Korea
- Sri Lanka
- Syria
- Taiwan
- Tajikistan
- Thailand
- Timor-Leste
- Turkmenistan
- United Arab Emirates
- Uzbekistan
- Vietnam
- Yemen
Africa
- Algeria
- Angola
- Benin
- Botswana
- Burkina Faso
- Burundi
- Cameroon
- Central African Republic
- Chad
- Cรดte dโIvoire
- Democratic Republic of the Congo
- Djibouti
- Egypt
- Eritrea
- Ethiopia
- Gabon
- Ghana
- Guinea
- Guinea-Bissau
- Kenya
- Liberia
- Libya
- Madagascar
- Mali
- Mauritania
- Morocco
- Mozambique
- Namibia
- Niger
- Nigeria
- Republic of the Congo
- Rwanda
- Senegal
- Sierra Leone
- Somalia
- Somaliland
- South Africa
- South Sudan
- Sudan
- Tanzania
- Togo
- Tunisia
- Uganda
- Western Sahara
- Zambia
- Zimbabwe