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. The essays in this volume examine some of the specific issues that have animated US politics over the past decades and analyze the institutions and institutional relationships of the American governmental process. The collection provides an introduction to the world's most powervul democracy for students of American government, politics, public administration and society.