United States culture was created through a blending of the many different people that live in the nation. Throughout American history, immigrants from all over the world have come to the United States, each contributing to U.S. culture. Here, students of different ethnic groups play on the jungle gym of their elementary school’s playground.

For most of the 20th century the common quarrel that has absorbed many American artists and thinkers has been one between the values of a mass, democratic popular culture and those of a refined elite culture accessible only to the few—the quarrel between “low” and “high.” In part, this was a problem that science left on the doorstep of the arts: beginning at the turn of the century, the growth of the technology of mass communications—motion pictures, the phonograph, radio and, eventually, television—created a potential audience for stories and music and theatre larger than anyone could previously have imagined.