This is part of a second-level Open University course presented for the first time in 1994. The course examines the experience of American society this century, using the insights and analytic tools of politics, geography, sociology, history, economics and literature to develop both a complex portrait and an understanding of the most powerful nation in the world. This volume of specially-commissioned essays on Hollywood and television, the novel, drama, popular music, sport, architecture and art explores the diverse manifestations of 20th-century American culture. It examines the roles of gender, ethnicity and religion in the construction of American culture and discusses the important issue of whether there is a universal or dominant culture and the extent to which this dominant culture has inhibited the expression of cultural diversity in an extraordinarily heterogeneous society.