1、the first English permanent settlementwas organized in 1607 by the London Company with a charter from the English KJing. The colonists settled in Virginia and survived by imposing strict discipline on themselves and by transplanting tobacco into the colony of Virginia .In 1619, the settlers elected their delegates and set up the House of Burgesses,and the same time they bought and enslavedblackservants.These two events greatly influenced the political and social debelopment of the Unite States later2、Puritanswere those who followed the doctrine of John Calvin and wanted to purify the Chuurch of England.They believe that human beings were predestined by God before they were born.Some were God's chosen people while others were damned to hell .No church nor good works could save people.The sign of being God's elect was the success in his oork or the prosperity in his calling.They also argued that everyone must read the Bible in order to find God's will and establish a direct contact with God. These beliefs had great impact on American culture.3、George Washingtonwas one of the founding fathers of the American Republic.He was the Commander-in-chief of the Continental Aemy in the War of Independence against the British colonial rule and the first President of the US4、Benjamin Franklin was one of thefounding fathers of the United States of America.He participated in writing the declaration of independence and making the US Constitution5、The Declaration of Independence was mainly drafted by Tomas Jefferson and adopted by the Congress on July 4,1776,when the people of 13 English colonies in North America were fighting for their freedom and independence from the British colonial rule. The document declared that all men were equal and that they were entitled to have some unalineable rights such aslife,liberty and the pursuit of happiness.It also explained the philosophy of government:the power of government came from the consent of the governed and the purpose of governments were to secure the rights mentioned above.The theory of politics and the guiding principles of the Amenrican Revolution mainly came from John Locke6．The Articles of Confederation :After the War of Independence was won, the new nation of the United States was organized under the agreement of the Articles of Confederation with a weak national government called the Congress. Each state had its own government, made its own laws and handled its internal affairs. The states did not cooperate with the Congress and with each other. The Congress had no power to force any state to contribute money to the national government and the Congress could not tax any citizen either. As a result, the Articles of Confederation failed.7．Federal system :A federal system is one in which power is shared between a central authority and its constituent parts, with some rights reserved to each.8.the making of the U.S Constitution T he Articles of Confederation failed. The Congress decided to hold a constitutional convention to revise the Articles of Confederation. The delegates from 12 states (Rhode Island refused to participated) gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 and end up in writing a new constitution and set a federal system with a strong central government. The Constitution provided that an election of the president would be called for, federal laws would be made only by a Congress made up of the House of Representatives and the Senate and a Supreme Court would be set up. This new Constitution was finally approved by the majority of the citizens in over 9 of the 13 states and was officially put into effect in 1787 .9.The executive branch i s the president, who is elected to a four-year term. A president can be elected to only two terms according to an amendment passed in 1951. The president can appointfederal judges as vacancies occur. He is the commander in chief of the armed forces. The president has otherbroad authorities in running the government departments and handling foreign relations.10. The Bill of Rights consists of the first 10 amendments which were added to the Constitution in 1791. The Bill of Rights was passed to guarantee freedom and individual rights such as freedom of speech, the right to assemble in public places, the right to own weapons and so on.11. Eli Whitney i s an American inventor who invented the cotton gin, which made removing the seeds from the bolls of cotton much easier. He also began manufacturing rifles with machinery, using interchangeable part. This contributed to the American systemof mass production.12. Samuel Slater In 1793, Samuel Slater built the first factory in the U.S --- a cotton cloth factory in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. He built the factory from memory, because it was a crime to carry factory plant out of England. The success of his factory started a process of change that turned the northeastern region of the United States into an important manufacturing center and helped the nation become a major cotton producer.13. Homeland security is short for the United States Department of HomelandSecurity(abbreviated as DHS). It is found on March 1,2003, and is a Cabinet department of the United States federal government with the primary responsibilities of protecting the territory of the US from terrorist attacks and responding to natural disasters. With more than 200, 000 employees, DHS is the third largest Cabinet department, after the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs. Other agencies with significant homeland security responsibilities include the Department of Health and Human Services, and Energy.14. Corporation is a form of business organization. Compared with the sole proprietorship and the partnership, the corporation may survive the death of its founder or founders. Because it could draw on a pool of investor, it is a much more efficient tool for raising the large amounts of capital needed by expanding business. And it enjoys limited liability, so inventors only risk the amount of their investment and not their entire assets.15. Service industries industries that sell a service rather than make a product，which now dominate the economy. Service industries range from banking to telecommunications to he provision of meals in restaurants. As more and more people are employed in service industries in the US, it is sometimes said the US has moved into a “post-industrial era”16. Stock When starting or expanding business, corporations need to borrow money. They may issue stocks for people to buy. When people buy stock, they become part owner of the company. If the company makes a profit, they receive a share of it. Likewise, if the company loses money, the stockholders will not make a profit or the value of their shares will drop-they lose money. Therefore buying stock is a risk.17. Agribusiness Because American agriculture is big business, people coined the term “agribusiness” to reflect the large-scale nature of agricultural enterprises in the modern US economy. The term covers the entire complex of farm-related business, from the individual farmer to the multinational maker of farm chemicals.It also includes farmer cooperatives, rural banks, shippers of farm products, commodity dealers, firms that manufacture farm equipment,food-processing industries, grocery chains and many other businesses.18. Migrant workers Many big farms hire temporary workers only for a specific chore-such as picking crops. Many of these seasonal workers travel from farm to farm, staying only until the crops are picked. They are known as migrant workers.19. Religious liberty The Declaration of Independence guaranteed the basic right of religious freedom and this right was a political necessity. The First Amendment to the U.S Constitutionexplicitly forbade the federal government to give special favors to any religion or to hinder the free practice,or exercise, of religion. When disputes about the relationship between government and religion arise, American courts must settle them. But American institutions presuppose a Supreme being therefore Christianity is often in practice, more favored than other religions.20. The Baptists ar e the largest Protestant group in America. They believe in adult baptism by immersion, symbolizing a mature and responsible conversion experience. They are concentrated particularly in the Southern Bible Belt . White Baptists and black Baptists go separately to their own churches.The Methodists a re the second largest Protestant group in the U.S. The Methodist Church has a form of service based on that of the Church of England.21. The Catholic Church is the largest single religious group in the U.S. More than 25% of all Americans are now of the Roman Catholic faith. The majority of the Catholic are descendants of immigrants from Ireland, Italy and Poland. They have the main strength in the east coast. In American history,the Catholics were discriminated against. By 1960,J.F.Kennedy's presidential election victory put to rest the Catholic religion as an issue in national politics. Today, the Catholics are active in running their own institutions, and have risen to positions of leadership in business, politics and labor.22.the Jewish More l iberal Protestant and Jewish clergymen joined non-believers in maintaining that abortion is a basic right for women.23. Religious diversity Frontier America has made the U.S. a fertile ground for the growth of new religious movements. Many religious communities and secular utopias, experiments in new forms of social living, were founded in 18th and 19th century America. Many small,sects and cults appear in American society all the time. They have certain tendencies in common. They regard the larger society as hopelessly corrupt. Some of them never win a large following, but some others prosper and graduate into the rank of the respectable denominations. Some non-Western religious such as Buddhism, Hindus and Islam are also begging to grow.24. Transcendentalists I n his book Nature, Ralph Waldo Emerson(1803-1882)claimed that by studying and responding to nature individuals could reach a higher spiritual state without formal religion.. A circle of intellectuals who were discontented with the New England establishment gathered around Emerson. They accepted Emerson’s theories about spiritual transcendence. They are known as Transcendentalists.25. The Scarlet Letter 红字was published in 1850. Set in the Puritan past, this masterpiece is the stark drama of a woman harshly cast out from her community for committing the sin of adultery. In this novel, Hawthorne explored certain moral themes such as guilt, pride and emotional repression.26. Herman Melville (赫尔曼?梅尔维尔1819-1891) published Moby Dick 白鲸. Moby Dick is the name of a big white whale. In this book, the author uses a story of a whaling voyage to explore profound themes such as fate, the nature of evil, and the individual’s struggle against the universe.27. Leaves of Gra ss 草叶集is a collection of poems composed by Walt Whitman. It is a ground-breaking book Whitman used free-flowing structures and long irregular lines in his poetry. He ventured beyond traditional forms to meet his need for more space to express the American spirit. In one of the poems “Song of Myself” he dwelt on himself because he saw himself as a prototype of “The American”.28. Mark Twain(p en name of Samuel Clemens (1835-1910) one of the greatest American writersand the first major American writer to be born away from the East Coast. His major work was The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) which has been called the greatest novel in American literature.29. Naturalists(自然主义作家) were novelists who concentrated upon the grim aspects of reality and a deterministic view of life. They were linked with European naturalists such as French novelist Zola. The most representative naturalists in American literature were StephenCrane,Theodore Dreiser, and Jack London.30. T.S. Eliot(托?斯?艾略特1888－1965) published a long poem The Waste Land 荒原in 1922. Using fragmented, haunting images and a dense structure of symbols, it revealed a pessimistic vision of post-World War I society. With t he publication of “The Waste Land”, Eliot dominated the so-called “Modern” movement in poetry.31. the “Lost Generation” (迷惘的一代)In the aftermath of World War I, many novelists produced a literature of disillusionment. Some lived abroad. They were known as the “Lost Generation”. The two most representative writers of the “Lost Generation” were Hemingway and Fitzgerald.32. Elementary School/Grammar school usually grades kindergarten through 8.But in some places,it incklude only K-6.Many Americans refers t o elementary grades as “grammer school”. They teach mathematics, language, arts, social studies and some other subjects33. Higher Education It refers to American education on the college level. It includes 4 categories of institutions. They are the uni versity, the four-year undergraduate institution (the college) the technical training institution and the two-year or community college.Some are supported by public funds and some by private funds. Many universities and colleges have won reputations for providing their students with a higher quality of education. The great majority are generally regarded as quite satisfactory.34. The Servicemen’s Readjustment Act / GI Bill of Rights (军人重新安置法) was passed in 1944. It was soon popularly called the “GI Bill of Rights”. GI was a nickname for the American soldier. The nickname came from the abbreviation for “Government Issue”--- the uniforms and other article “issued” to a soldier. The Act promised financial aid for higher education to members of the armed forces.35. Affirmative action programs肯定行动计划were first advocated by some colleges in the 1960s. The purpose of the program was to equalize educational opportunities for all groups and to make up for past inequality by giving special reference to members of minorities seeking jobs or admission to college.36. Greensboro Sit-in On February 1, 1960, 4 freshmen from a black college in Greensboro, North Carolina (北卡罗莱纳州), sat down at a department lunch counter and ordered coffee. When refused, they continued to sit at the counter, openly defying the segregation law prevailing in the state. The next day, more students joined them. Thus began the civil rights movement, which spread from the sou th to the north. Later, this quiet “sit-in” became the major nonviolent direct action tactics to be used by black civil rights activists.37. The Civil Rights Movement One of the most important of all social movement in the 1960s U.S. history. Rosa Park’s spontaneous action in 1955 was believed to be the true beginning of the civil rights movement. The black students’ sit-in at a department lunch counter in North Carolina touched off the nationwide civil rights movement. During the first half of the decade, civil rights organizations like SNCC(the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, CORE (the Congress of Racial Equality, and SCLC(the Southern Christian Leadership Conference struggled for racial integration by providing leadership, tactics, network and the people. In the latter half ofthe decade, some black organizations changed their nonviolent tactics, and emphasized on more radical means to end discrimination and raised the self image of the blacks. The civil rights movement produced such great leaders as Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X, who inspireda generation of both blacks and whites to devote their lives to fighting for racial equality in theU.S.38. Montgomery Bus Boycot t蒙哥马利抵制公交车隔离政策运动In December 1995, Rosa Parks,a NAACP （National Association for the Advancement of Colored People member in Montgomery Alabama, refused to give up her seat to a white man on a public bus. Alabama law required that blacks sit at the back of the bus, and when asked, surrender their seats to whites. Mrs. Parks was arrested. Local black leaders decided to boycott the city’s bus system. Black people in the city spontaneously began to boycott the bus system refusing to ride on public buses. In the year long Montgomery bus boycott, blacks young and old, walked to work. Withthe bus com pany near bankruptcy, and the aid of a 1956 Supreme Court decision, Montgomery blacks triumphed. IN fact, the boycott was believed to be the true.39. Martin Luther King, Jr. Martin Luther King, Jr., an Atlanta-born Baptist minister (浸礼会牧师), was the leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference during the civil rights movement of the 1960s. To promote his philosophy of nonviolent protest against segregation and other kinds of social injustice, King organized a series of “marches”, including the March on Washington of August, 1963, when King delivered his famous “I have a Dream” speech. As a civil rights leader, King worked not only to end racial discrimination 0and poverty, but also to raise the self image of the blacks. Due to his strong belief in nonviolent peaceful protest, King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. He was assassinated in the city of Memphis in April 1968.40.“counterculture” In the wake of the Free Speech Movement and the New Left appeared a phenomenon that historians called the “counter culture”. The Counter Culture rejected capitalism and other American principles. They had morals different from taught by their parents. Some groups of youth tried to construct differentways of life. Among the most famous were the hippies. They sought new experience through dropping out, drugs. But it was music, rock music in particular, that became the chief vehicle for the counter cultural assault on traditional American society. The counter culture exerted a great influence upon people’s attitudes toward social mores, marriage, career, and success.41’ the black “underclass”(“最低层”黑人)The majority of the blacks today have failed to share in the general gains of progress made recently. The urban ghettos now contain a permanently impoverished “underclass” of habitually unemployed or underemployed black people. Many of them are young and unskilled. They live in cities where the unemployment rate for teenage black workers runs as high as 50% or about 8 times the rate for the American work force as a whole. This “underclass” could continue to persist, even in the absence of racial discrimination, in much the same way as other pockets of poverty persist—that is, for reasons of social-class inequality. Living in an environment of poverty, decay, crime, drug addiction, joblessness, and hopelessness, this ghetto underclass offers an explosive potential for the future.42. Poverty as a social problem The U.S is one of the most wealthy countries in the world. Yet over 24 million people or about 10% of the population are living at or below the official poverty line, on incomes that the federal government considers insufficient to meet basic requirement of food, clothing, and shelter. There are millions more, living slightly above the poverty line, whose plight is not much better. Also, the social services in the U.S compare unfavorably with those in most industrialized societies. Furthermore, the affluent majority seems indifferent to the problems of the poor. This raises some serious moral problems and inevitably creates fierce conflicts of interest and many political controversies. Therefore, poverty in the U.S becomes a social problem.43. Drug Abuse (滥用毒品) Drug abuse in the U.S. has come to be regarded as one of themost challenging social problems facing the nation. The drug issue always excites strong emotions of Americans because drug abuse is perceived as a major threat to American society, particularly to its younger members. Drug abuse is a social problem because it has a wide range of social costs. For example, drug is closely related with crime, automobile accidents. It has serious effects on individuals physically and mentally, and the economic losses caused by drug abuse are great44. white-collar crimes (白领阶层的犯罪) White-collar crimes are those committed by higher income groups such as the crimes of fraud, false advertising, corporate price fixing, bribery, embezzlement, industrial pollution, tax evasion and so on. Yet the statistics provided by the FBI tend to overlook white-collar crimes. In fact, white-collar crimes are often ignored by law enforcement agencies. Some sociologists argue that the higher classes may actually have a higher rate of crime than the lower classes.45. The abuse of power by government ：People believe that public organizations in the U.S. sometimes work in concert to advance their own interests rather than those of the people. Government in America is widely distrusted for the lack of answerability. Americans were convinced that the Johnson and Nixon administrations were deliberately and systematically lying to the people in the war against Vietnam and in the Watergate scandal. The FBI and the CIA are responsible for thousands of illegal acts. All these acts show the abuse of power by government.46. The abuse of power by corporations：The abuse of power by corporations is shown in the fact that these corporations are concerned with their own profits than with social responsibility, the quality or price of their products, or the truth of their advertising. They maintain professional lobbyists lobbyist in Washington to influence public officials behind the scenes. They argue for legislation to serve their own ends, influence the appointment of officials,block reforms they consider undesirable, and often seem to have more say in the councils of government than the ordinary voter. Many Americans believe that “big business” has taken the reins of government away from Congress and the Administration”, and that “government is run bya few big interest groups looking after themselves.”47. Social stratified American society ：American society is a stratified (有等级的) one, in which power, wealth, and prestige are unequally distributed among the population. It is divided into social classes that have varying degrees of access to the reward t he society offers. For example, the richest fifth of American individuals and families owns more than three-quarters of the wealth in the U.S., whereas the lowest fifth owns only 0.2% of the wealth. The richest fifth of American families receives over 40% of the national income, whereas the poorest fifth receives only 5.2%.48. Richard Nixon: Richard Nixon was the former President of the United States.He won the election in 1968 and was re-elected in 1972.While he was in office,he contributed to the establishment of diplomatic relations between the US and China and visited China in1972.Shortly after he was re-elected,he was involved in the Watergate scandal, for which he was forced to resign from the presidency.49. The World Wide Web commonly known as the Web or the "Information Superhighway", is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a web browser, one can view web pages that may contain text, images, videos, and other multimedia, and navigate between them via hyperlinks.50. NRA : the National Rifle Association of America is an American non-profit lobbying group that advocates for the protection of the Second Amendment of the United States Bill of Rights, and the promotion of firearm ownership rights as well as marksmanship, firearm safety, and the protection of hunting and self-defense in the United States.51. The melting pot i s a metaphor for a heterogeneous society becoming more homogeneous, the different elements "melting together" into a harmonious whole with a common culture. It is particularly used to describe the assimilation of immigrants to the United States; themelting-together metaphor was in use by the 1780s.52.The USA a s a kaleidoscop e: this is a metaphor for nation self-definition.The metaphor emerged in the late 20th century .As a metaphor for a nation self-definition ,a kaleidoscope overcome the big problem with the never change mosaic image,which reflected the many different groups that have gone into making up the American population.53 shift marriage patterns in the USA:Before WWII,most families were patriarchal,thatis ,dominated by the senior male as husband and father. In the late 1970s and the introduction of "on fault"divorce laws that are now nearly universal in American states , the divorce rate has been about 50%.That is half of first marriages, half of second marriages,and so on,end in divorce.。
