By: Johan Sudanta & Riko

America’s Natural Landscapes

A. Geographic Dimension in America History

America is a nation with an abundace of geography but a shortage of history. It makes

American’ encounter with their land was abrupt and often vioent, consuming much of the
nation’ energies. Very often American history has been a tale based on geogrphic
superlatives. The country was geographically fortunate. Insulated by two large oceans,
Europe and Asia. The vast expanse of national territory contained a wealth of environments,
which allowed the nation tobe come self sufficient in agriculture and most basic minerals.
The magnificent of natural waterways hooked the territory so trave was cheap. The wealth of
environment made America as a promising land and made huge migration.

B. Patterns of Landforms: Main Framework

America’s geologic and topographic framework is built around a huge interior lowland
that has yielded some of America’s greatest agricultural and mineral wealth. The region is
drained by Mississippi River and its great tributaries. It serves as a potent geographic
symbol—the traditional dividing line in America between “East” and “West”. The mountain
ranges differ substantially from each other. The Appalachians on the east stretch almost
unbroken from Alabama to the Canadian border. Four first order topographic regions of
America contains from east to west is Atlantic and Gulf Coastal Plain, Appalachians and their
foothils, Interior Lowlands, and Cordillera.

C. Climate And Its Consequences

Due to its large size and wide range of geographic features, the United States contains
examples of nearly every global climate. The climate is temperate in most areas, subtropical
in the Southern United States, tropical in Hawaii and southern Florida, polar in Alaska,
semiarid in the Great Plains west of the 100th meridian, Mediterranean in coastal California
and arid in the Great Basin.

The main influence on U.S. weather is the polar jet stream which migrates northward into
Canada in the summer months, and then southward into the USA in the winter months. The
jet stream brings in large low pressure systems from the northern Pacific Ocean that enter the
US mainland over the Pacific Northwest.

In northern Alaska, tundra and arctic conditions predominate, and the temperature has
fallen as low as −80 °F (−62.2 °C).On the other end of the spectrum, Death Valley, California
once reached 134 °F (56.7 °C), the highest temperature ever recorded on Earth. On average,
the mountains of the western states receive the highest levels of snowfall on Earth. In the
east, while snowfall does not approach western levels, the region near the Great Lakes and
the mountains of the Northeast receive the most. In central portions of the U.S., tornadoes are
more common than anywhere else on Earth and touch down most commonly in the spring
and summer. Deadly and destructive hurricanes occur almost every year along the Atlantic
seaboard and the Gulf of Mexico

D. Character Values
 An activist approach to life
 Freedom
 Humanitarianism

American Manners
A. Manners in America

As a problem in American life manners have existed as long as the nation for colonial
societies often resemble purified versions of their mother culture. The ideals had been
nourished by Renaissance courtiers and noblemen and were dispersed as general guides
through the rise of an urban and normally commercial middle class. In America as in Europe
etiqutte soon entered religious and the economically mobile. Some of the earliest American
printed books addressed the cultivation of good manners.

The first issue, which dominated social commentary between the Revolution and the Civil
War, grew out of the conflict between political democracy and traditional forms of authority.
Some of experts and profesionals are tested for the experience analyzed stagecoach
conversations and steamboat romances, behavior in hotel lobbies and at dining tables, etc.

On the other side of the ledger were those arguing that Americans maintained both
civility and social safety without reliance on the characteristic oppressions used elsewhere.
Alexander Mackay wrote in the 1840s, “neither has it a pedestal in the mire beneath.”
Friendly observers admitted that Americans were freer with strangers than European
practices permitted, but acknowledged that such easy curiosity was different from insolence.

B. Character Values
 Tolerance of Diversity
 A belief that progress can be achieved
 A moral character