Fifty States, One Planet: How America’s Messy Federal Experiment Became the World’s Favorite Reality Show
The United States, that vast laboratory of late-stage capitalism and earnest flag-waving, has always insisted on packaging itself in neat little bundles. Fifty of them, to be precise—states, commonwealths, and one District that pays taxes without representation, a civic arrangement that would make any European monarch blush. To the rest of the planet, this tidy…
