Americans moving westward in the mid-1800s did so for a variety of reasons. Stories of rich farmland in the Oregon Territory interested many to sell everything they owned and head out for a new beginning. The flood of immigrants from Europe, along with a higher birth rate, fueled a push west as large-scale farming could help support growth in the East. The US population had grown from more than five million in 1800 to more than twenty-three million by the mid-1800s. Others looked to make it rich in the expanding fur trade and were up for the adventures of trapping. In 1849, the news of gold in California caused a mad dash for wealth. Some were curious about the mysterious West and felt that what lay across the Mississippi River might just be the change they were looking for. Whatever the reason, an estimated 4,000,000 Americans moved into the new frontier between 1820 and 1850 and in the process shaped a new identity in the American West built on ruggedness, new feelings of freedom, and a spirit of individualism.

Throughout this chapter, you will learn why the colonists felt that they had no choice but to fight the British! The Intolerable Acts from Parliament & King George were “the last straw!” As you read you will learn how the Patriots gained confidence by standing up to the largest army in the world.

Even though the 1920s were “roaring” in many respects, from an economic standpoint it became clear that serious problems threatened the nation’s economy. Important industries were in trouble and overproduction plagued the agricultural sector. As the decade came to a close, the slipping economy would soon crash, thus ending a decade of innovation, cultural advances, and individual prosperity.

The Declaration of Independence was just the beginning. The colonists kept this document in mind as they fought for independence and created their own government. This Declaration has inspired, and continues to inspire, the promise of freedom around the world.

The nation continued to grow in size and wealth, each region experiencing its own different kind of economic growth which caused them to develop differently. Citizens differed across regions in their ideas of political, economic, and social progress. For the success of the growing nation, Americans throughout the country tried to compromise on their disagreements. Unfortunately, no amount of compromise could minimize the harsh growing pains the nation was about to experience.

After four long and bitter years of a disastrous conflict that claimed the lives of over 620,000 soldiers, a haggard and worn president looked over the crowd and uttered the immortal words: “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

During the last part of the eighteenth and the first part of the nineteenth centuries, there was a growing interest in social reform, or an organized movement to improve the quality of life for particular groups of people. The motivations behind these movements were both political and religious.

As Soviet and U.S. soldiers worked together to liberate Germany at the end of World War II in Europe, many on both sides hoped for continued friendship between the two countries. However, problems had been building between the two nations both before and during the war. Combined with the incompatibility of the economic and political systems that drove both countries, significant foreign policy clashes were imminent.

The Cold War had a significant impact on domestic life in the decade after the WWII; however, for most Americans, economic prosperity and social aspects such as pop culture and the building of suburban lifestyles by the middle class dominated thoughts of anti-Communist fear. Even though the 1950s were known as a time of unprecedented prosperity, not every subgroup of American society benefitted. The urban poor, Mexican Americans, and Native Americans were left untouched by the economic boom, living in poverty.

Just like the industrialization that took place in the North, the geographical features of the region played just as important a role in the agrarian way of life in the South. Because geography was responsible for almost every aspect of life in the South (as it was in the North as well), its significance cannot be understated.

In third grade you learned about the geography of the state of Michigan. You may have studied the geography of Michigan by learning about what makes Michigan special. This year, in studying the geography of the United States, you will explore a similar question. It is centered around what makes the country in which we live special.

In previous grades you’ve learned a little about economics and that economics deals with choices. We all make choices every day. We make choices about what to buy. We make choices about whether to save or spend money. You will learn in this chapter that economics is about more than just choices. Economics is the study of how individuals and societies use resources to produce goods and services. It is about competition and prices and trade. As you learn you will be working as an economist, someone who studies economics.

You have learned that there are different areas of social studies and different kinds of social scientists. You learned that geographers study geography and economists study economics. This chapter is about civics, another important area of social studies. Civics is the study of government and the role people play in government. But who studies civics??? Civicsers? Civicsists? It’s a little more complicated this time. Political scientists study civics! Politics is just another name for government. But wait, what is government? Government is a system that people use to provide order and make decisions. It is also a system for distributing power like the power to make laws and the power to enforce laws. It is also a system for regulating the conduct of people, or how people
behave.

Should water from the Great Lakes be used in other places? The question of “who owns the water?” and “should it be used to help other places in the country that need it?” is one that our nation has been wrestling with for years. You will be responsible for writing an opinion essay on this very topic. You will be introduced to the topic of decreasing water levels in the Great Lakes by watching two videos and reading a short passage. Finally you will compose an opinion essay on the public issue: Should water be diverted from the Great Lakes to other parts of the United States that need water?

Quite simply, “Geography” broken down means “to study the earth” and throughout your studies in the book, we are going to expand on this definition. If you were to go home and ask your parents about geography they may have studied in school, they might say when they were students they memorized the states and capitals, or major countries in the world. This is only one part of what geography really is however. To study geography is to study where we are in the world; what the world around us is like. It is the study of who lives there and why.

The landmass of North America lies in the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic to the north, the continent of South America and the Caribbean Sea to the south, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. The land is rich in resources like coal, natural gas, oil, timber products, freshwater, and an abundance of plant and animal species. Renewable resources such as wind, water, biomass, geothermal and solar are widely used as well.

The area known as Latin America is made up of the region south of the United States, beginning at the river that separates the U.S. from Mexico, the Rio Grande’, and extending to the southern tip of South America, an area known as Cape Horn.

The region of North Africa and the Middle East lies at the continental crossroads of Asia, Africa and Europe. At this intersection of the world, all three continents meet here at the Mediterranean Sea. The region extends from the eastern border of Pakistan to the Atlantic coast of Morocco in the west. The region includes many diverse landscapes. It contains rugged mountains, vast deserts, spacious plains and is surrounded by numerous seas. In this unit, you will learn how geography impacts the way people live. You will also discover how culture impacts a person’s perspective.

In the introduction to this book you learned briefly about the five themes of geography, and previous chapters have covered the geographic themes of Movement (North America), Human/ Environment Interaction (Latin America), and Location (North Africa and the Middle East). This chapter will help you begin to think more about the theme of “place.” Geographers define the study of place as the conditions at a location, or more simply, a study of what it’s like there. If you look back at the chapters on North America, Latin America, and North Africa and the Middle East you’ll notice in the sections on physical geography that this question has really been answered.

Over seven billion (7,000,000,000) people live on planet Earth. South Asia has over 1,000,000,000 people alone. Geographers determine regions of the world differently, usually based on characteristics that an area shares, such as language, climate, religion or economic similarities. For our purposes, South Asia includes: India, Nepal,