Four Regions

The Census Bureau’s four regions — Northeast, Midwest, South, and West — are a blunt but useful way to hold fifty states in your head. They are not climates or cultures so much as filing drawers: New England and the Mid-Atlantic; the Great Lakes and Great Plains; the old Confederacy plus the border South; and everything from the Rockies to the Pacific, including Alaska and Hawaii.

Regional memory still shapes politics and law. Water in the West, industry around the Lakes, the South’s distinct legal history after Reconstruction — none of that is on the flag, and all of it shows up in how states use the powers the Tenth Amendment left them.

When you study capitals, group by region first. Pierre is easier to remember as a Plains capital than as a free-floating trivia item. The States desk in this almanac is built that way on purpose.