BBC correspondent Kevin Connolly, leaving his post in America after 3 years, writes a poignant look at what has intrigued, surprised, and charmed him about the U.S.
These things too are familiar enough, but a country so large, so restless and so energetic is necessarily full of surprises and contradictory impulses too.
This is after all, the land that gave us prohibition and then invented organised crime to get around it.