by David Garrow
Many longtime friends—my wonderful former spouse, Susan Newcomer; Kim Fellner; Charles Kaiser; Ellen Chesler; Steve Fayer; Keith Miller; Jim Cone; Rachelle Horowitz; JoBeth McDaniel; and Marland Buckner; as well as Pete and Matt Kurzweg, and Carole and Tom Horowitz in Pittsburgh, Catherine O’Brien in D.C., and Patrick Parr—have all been wonderfully supportive in manifold ways. Gary Pomerantz, Laura Hunter, Charles and Brenda Eagles, and Mark Bradley and Liza Mundy all willingly devoted hours of their time to reading this book in final manuscript form, and I remain undyingly grateful to them all.
Andrew Wylie has been unstinting in his support for this complicated endeavor, and Jackie Ko and Lauren Rogoff have been superb as well. Steve Wasserman and especially Scott Moyers provided valuable advice for which I remain deeply indebted. At HarperCollins, Henry Ferris and Nick Amphlett have been repeatedly helpful, and assistant general counsel Trina Hunn made the legal review as pleasant as possible. Throughout the final months of this herculean endeavor, senior production editor Dale Rohrbaugh oversaw a process whose complexity was exceeded only by its scale. Greg Villepique performed an excellent copyedit; Sarajane Herman conducted an astonishingly impressive proofread; and Cynthia Crippen produced a far better index than the author could have. Publicist Sharyn Rosenblum demonstrated her savvy even months prior to publication.
Beginning in July 2013, Bob Bauer has striven impressively to balance an appreciation of the scholarly mission against the professional demands of representing the world’s busiest client, and both Judy Casey and Ferial Govashiri have been unstintingly helpful. Barack Obama devoted dozens of hours to reading the first ten chapters of this manuscript, and his understandable remaining disagreements—some strong indeed—with multiple characterizations and interpretations contained herein do not lessen my deep thankfulness for his appreciation of the scholarly seriousness with which I have pursued this project and for what became eight full hours of always-intense “off-the-record” conversations.
No one has sacrificed more of their own personal happiness on account of this nine-year undertaking than has Darleen Opfer. There were scores of enjoyable experiences along the way, whether in New Zealand or Chicago, but there were also hours alone in a rental car in a CBS Studios parking lot and evenings when talkative interviewees made dinner a notional concept. Her support, from early on in Cambridge through her painstaking edit of the epilogue, has again and again made this a better book.
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