Nine Nations of North America
Introduction
In 1981 Joel Garreau, a writer for the Washington Post, wrote the book: The Nine Nations of North America (Houghton Mifflin, Boston). In that book Garreau writes:
"Forget the pious wisdom you've been handed about North America.Forget the borders dividing the United States, Canada, and Mexico, those pale barriers so thoroughly porous to money, immigrants, and ideas.
Forget the bilge you were taught in sixth-grade geography about East and West, North and South, faint echoes of glorious pasts that never really existed save in sanitized textbooks.
Forget the maze of state and provincial boundaries, those historical accidents and surveyors' mistakes. The reason no one except the trivia expert can name all fifty of the United States is that they hardly matter.
Forget the political almanacs full of useless data on local elections rendered meaningless by strangely carved districts and precincts.
Consider, instead, the way North America really works. It is Nine Nations. Each with its capital and distinctive web of power and influence.... These nations look different, feel different, and sound different from each other, and few of their boundaries match the political lines drawn on current maps....
Most importantly, each nation has a distinctive prism through which it views the world."
[Garreau, pp. 1-2]
Well, WE won't completely forget the boundaries found on current maps, but we will try to understand the Nine Nations [na9nat] defined by Garreau.
For each region we will identify where it is, its capital, its symbol, a keyword to help us identify the nation, and examples of its popular culture. We will also discuss, describe, and explain each of North America's Nine Nations.
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