The Birthday Party: America at 250

This is a piece I helped produce for the The New Yorker Radio Hour and Transom. A few months ago, the great American historian and writer Jill Lepore shared a documentary with us that was presented by the National Park Service for the nation's bicentennial in 1976. In it, Americans shared what they thought about the 200th year of the republic: how the country was doing, what it meant to be an…