He's won most of the literary prizes worth winning. His voice is familiar to anyone who watches public television. As an historian, he's bridged that yawning gap between popular and academic history.

David McCullough is in love with America's history, from its struggling birth to its soaring achievements. In turn, American readers are in love with David McCullough -- more than 10 million copies of his books are in print. All published by Simon and Schuster, a company owned by CBS. In these last hours before Tuesday's election -- in this season of uncertainty -- we thought it might be useful to reflect a little with McCullough, on our history and the people who got us here.

David McCullough: We are an optimistic people by nature. And we've always had reason to be optimistic. We also have always had reason to think we're a nation in decline. That's nothing new about that. You can go back and read the letters of Henry Adams and, written in the 19th century, and the country was just going to hell....