An Outline of US History

Description

An Outline of US History. This book of US History was published by the U.S. Information Agency for readers in foreign countries. In accordance with a 1972 amendment to the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, U.S. public diplomacy products were not allowed to be available in the U.S. After USIA was folded into the State Department in 1999, the restriction continued for publications issued by its Bureau of International Information Programs (IIP). The restriction ended in 2013.

The imprints for USIA publications were “United States Information Service,” “International Communication Agency” (1978-1982), or “Embassy of the United States of America.” The volumes were usually printed at one of the USIA regional printing plants in Vienna, Mexico City, or Manila and shipped to U.S. diplomatic posts for distribution. Subsequent print runs and minor updates of standard volumes were usually printed with the same cover design as the original edition, but revised editions usually had new cover designs. The English texts were often translated into other languages. To date an individual copy, look for the number at the bottom of the last page inside the back cover. The first two digits represent the year the volume was printed. An Outline of US History

At the height of the Ice Age, between 34,000 and 30,000 B.C., much of the world’s water was locked up in vast continental ice sheets. As a
result, the Bering Sea was hundreds of meters below its current level, and a land bridge, known as Beringia, emerged between Asia and North
America. At its peak, Beringia is thought to have been some 1,500 kilometers wide. A moist and treeless tundra, it was covered with grasses and plant life, attracting the large animals that early humans hunted for their survival. The first people to reach North America almost certainly did so without knowing they had crossed into a new continent. They would have been following game, as their ancestors had for thousands of years, along the Siberian coast and then across the land bridge.