Acknowledgments

I have always thought that whoever said that no man is an island got it pretty much backward. Most islands are the very tops of underwater mountains, the tiny green part that you see supported by a massive and invisible structure just below the waves. So, if the point is that no one does anything unaided, and that credit for everything we do should be spread among our friends and families and colleagues, then we are all islands, propped up by folks who help but who are not seen. Certainly this book would have never gotten started or completed without the help of a mountain of very generous people.

I would like to particularly thank my good friend Bob Kiel, who probably told me no less than 17,827 times that I should write a book. Thanks also to Xandy Johnson, for his generous support and encouragement throughout the writing of this book.

I would also like to say “thank you” to everyone who reviewed this book in its various drafts, including the aforementioned Bob and Xandy, along with Mike Abner, Geoff Adams, Peter Cooper, Tom Corbin, Bill Higgins, Jason Long, Steve Metsker, Glenn Pruitt, Rob Sanheim, Mike Stok, and Gary Winklosky. And special thanks to Andy Lynn and Arild Shirazi, who both went over early drafts of the manuscript with an invaluable, if sometimes painful, fine-toothed comb. Special thanks to Rob Cross for finding that “last” typo.

Thanks also to Heli Roosild, a very professional writer who took the time to look over some things I had written and said, “Yes, this will do.”

Thanks also to Lara Wysong, Raina Chrobak, and Christopher Guzikowski, all of Addison-Wesley—especially Chris, who read a 900-word blog article and saw a 384-page book. Thanks also to Jill Hobbs, who copyedited this book with a sharp eye and an even sharper pen.

I’d also like to thank the fine folks at FGM for creating the kind of intellectual environment that makes efforts like this book possible.

Thanks, too, to Steve McMaster and his band of merry men at SamSix for their support and encouragement.

On a more personal level, I would like to thank my wife Karen for her encouragement and suggestions, and for lending me the end of the kitchen table for all those months. Thanks, too, to my son Jackson for letting me tell stories about him here and there in these pages. Many thanks to Diana Greenberg, a good friend in the best of times, and a great friend in the worst of times.

Thanks to my brother Charles for setting an example of courage and persistence that I try to live up to every day.

Finally, thanks to my sister Dolores for awakening my interest in reading. I clearly remember the day she dragged me across the library, away from the trash I had been browsing and over to a shelf of serious books. She pulled one down and said, “This is the kind of thing you should be reading.” I can still picture the book. It was The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer, all 1,264 pages of it. I think I was seven at the time.

Acknowledgments for the Second Printing

Thanks to the following individuals for taking the time to report mistakes in the earlier versions of this book: Sam Aaron, Gus Gollings, Dean Holdren, John Hohlen, Jochen Hayek, Gary L. Johnson, Michael Nah, Glenn Ritz, Brian Uri, Juri Vainonen, Howard Wong, the French translation team of Laurent Julliard, Mikhail Kachakidze, and Richard (with an ‘i’) Piacentini, and the Japanese translation team, especially Yumeto Yamagishi and Yutaka Sugano.