I am currently cruising through the Panama Canal. To prepare for the journey, I waded through David McCullough's National Book Award-winning tome The Path Between the Seas about the creation of the Panama Canal between 1870 and 1914. It is a story of delusion and determination, political treachery and cooperation, engineering feats and medical breakthroughs, tragedy and triumph, and the collective effort of historic figures like President Theodore Roosevelt as well as many thousands of unknown toilers. I finished McCullough's book amid the testy GOP and Democrat debates, as popular rejection of the political establishment propelled unlikely outsiders to the top of polls amid looming challenges to energy, environment, infrastructure and health technology. I found myself naturally longing to visit times when American politics was capable of the grand and visionary progress of McCullough's history (minus the gunboat diplomacy). I turned to my copy of Tom Wolfe's space-program tale The Right Stuff about another national effort that pushed the envelope of technology and individual heroism. I searched out the Hoover Dam saga told in Colossus by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Michael Hitzik, and the well-reviewed Empire Express, David Bain's sprawling history of the building of the transcontinental railroad. And I was reassured. All histories reminded me that America's great national projects have been born amid, and survived in spite of, political conflict and even outright skulduggery. If history is a guide, our thirst for common purpose toward uncommon achievement will survive spates of political aridity. For inspiration from McCullough's Panama Canal tale, see http://www.amazon.com/The-Path-Between-Seas-1870-1914/dp/0671244094
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