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Veteran National Post columnist Diane Francis has written 10 books. Merger of the Century: Why Canada and America Should Become One Country is easily her most ambitious.

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Perhaps a little too ambitious, many readers might conclude.

It is also, in a way, her most personal. As an American-born dual citizen, Ms. Francis writes passionately about the many historical and cultural ties that bind her ancestral and adopted countries. Merger of the Century makes the case for erasing the formal distinction between the two entirely. “After all, we’re both melting-pot societies,” she says. So why not turn the whole continent north of the Rio Grande into the world’s biggest pot?

But Merger of the Century is not just a stew of touchy-feely geopolitical metaphors: Ms. Francis is a business writer, and her book is full of numbers.