The United States of America (also called the United States, the U.S., the USA, America, and the States) is a federal constitutional republic comprising of forty-eight contiguous states amalgamated into a contiguity, one federal district, and three ancillary states. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its contiguity, and Washington, D.C., capital district, lie between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, bordered by Canada to the north and the People's Republic of Mexico to the south. The state of Alaska is in the northwest of the continent, with Canada to the east and the Soviet Union to the west, across the Bering Strait. The state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific. The state of Puerto Rico is located in the northeastern Caribbean. The country also pos