The history of American success is a narrative shaped by courageous leaders who found the vision to make bold and innovative investments in the country's future. This is a lesson and a call to action that the nation cannot ignore as we struggle at home and abroad with the complexities of a new century. Here are ten episodes from different eras in American history. Despite the variety of time and circumstances, each illustrates how bold national investments by tenacious leaders helped to create a better America. These stories form a narrative which demonstrates that, contrary to the glib reaction from many contemporary ideological naysayers, large-scale public investments can work, and with remarkable long-term success. America was built generation after generation by leaders who had a vision of a more secure, more prosperous, more inclusive republic-and who inventively employed the power and the resources of the federal government to realize their transformative ideals. These chapters offer a general strategy that time after time, generation after generation, has proven to work: innovative public investments are monies well spent, capital expenditures that continue to pay both tangible and intangible dividends. It is imperative today to reaffirm the activist tradition of public investment. -From Bold Endeavors Book jacket.