ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

More than a dozen people helped with the research for this book over the five years I spent preparing it. I would like particularly to thank Tait Foster, who gave me a great deal of excellent, prompt and accurate research help.

There were many others who read the book, listened to its ideas and provided suggestions and helpful criticism. Many people, therefore, should share the credit for the book, and I thank them sincerely, while all errors of course remain my own. They include:

Rob Akam, Ardian Arifaj, Stephanie Blair, Lyle Berman, Lili Birnbaum, John Brademas, Jake Camara, Royston Coppenger, David Cornwell, Neill Denny, Joy de Menil, Anna Dupont, Mark Earls, Susanna Emmet, Nick Fraser, Karl French, Sasha Frère-Jones, Katie Genereux, Ed Harriman, Arya Iranpour, Ian Irvine, Mladen Joksic, Tina Kraja, Jordan Kyle, Alnoor Ladha, Horatia Lawson, Ann Lee, Neil Levine, Andrew Lewis, Professor Catherine Lu, Joshua Marston, Catherine Martin, Charlotte Meyer, Professor Laila Parsons, Vincent Pouliot, Catherine Ross, Clementine Ross, Ivo Ross, Karmen Ross, Oliver Ross, Paddy (Alan) Ross, Victoria (Tori) Rowan, Jeffrey Rubin, Iain Scollay, Imran Shafi, Angharad Thain, Inigo Thomas, Professor Rob Wisnovsky and Melissa Withers.

I want to thank my colleagues at, and the board members of, Independent Diplomat, and Whitney Ellsworth in particular, who have been very patient in tolerating the preparation of this book, and the voluble expression of its ideas, sometimes in very primitive form. I am profoundly grateful to my wife, Karmen, who has accompanied me in the long journey of this book, and remains, as ever, my chief inspiration and most acute critic. More than anyone, she has helped me cut through the wooliness and hypocrisies of political convention, including most particularly my own, to the necessary truths of injustice.

I am especially grateful to David Rosenthal at Blue Rider Press for supporting this book, and for his acute advice and criticism, and to Aileen Boyle and other colleagues at Blue Rider, and to Dorian Hastings, for their rapid and sensitive encouragement and support. And I thank my editor at Simon & Schuster (UK), Mike Jones, who shepherded the book when it must have seemed a doomed venture. I’m deeply indebted to my agents in the UK and U.S., respectively Jonny Geller at Curtis Brown and George Lucas at Inkwell Management. Without their help and encouragement, at times in dark days, this book would not have come into being.