Our moxie always came in the two basic types. We possessed the unexciting virtues embodied by the Puritans and their secular descendants like Ben Franklin: steady hard work, frugality, sobriety, and common sense. And then there’s our wilder, faster, and looser side, that packet of attributes that also makes us American: impatient, overexcited gamblers with a weakness for stories too good to be true.
