United States

The United States is a country that needs no introduction but defies every simple one. It is the third largest country in the world by area, stretching from the frozen tundra of Alaska to the tropical beaches of Hawaii, from the Atlantic seaboard to the Pacific coast, with deserts, prairies, mountains, swamps, and every conceivable landscape in between. It is home to 340 million people from every corner of the Earth, speaking hundreds of languages, practicing every religion, and holding every political opinion simultaneously and loudly.

The cultural output is staggering and inescapable. America invented jazz, blues, rock and roll, hip-hop, Hollywood cinema, the internet, the personal computer, the airplane, and the atomic bomb. It put humans on the Moon. Its universities, technology companies, and financial institutions dominate the global landscape. Its national parks protect some of the most extraordinary landscapes on the planet. The country was founded on an idea - that all people are created equal - and has been arguing about what that means ever since. The United States is contradictory, complicated, infuriating, and fascinating in roughly equal measure, and there is nowhere else quite like it.