I especially am indebted to Dr. Seymour Drescher and Dr. Steven Vardy for their advice in the publication of this study. I also am indebted to the late Dr. James Clarke. Without assistance from other individuals, this work could not have been published. I wish to thank Dr. David Anderson of Butler County Community College, Keith Arrington of the Iowa Masonic Grand Lodge Library, and Roy Goodman of the American Philosophical Society. Librarians from Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Pittsburgh gave me invaluable assistance. The late Dr. Stephen Fischer-Galati, editor of the East European Monograph Series, was of great assistance.
Numerous individuals were involved with the second edition of this book. I wish to thank Nancy Tyson of Columbia University Press’s East European Monograph Series for consenting to the publication by McFarland of the book’s second edition. She also allowed me to include, as Appendix 3, my “Freemasonry as a Source of Jewish Civil Rights in Late Eighteenth-Century Vienna and Philadelphia: A Study in Atlantic History,” East European Quarterly XXXIV, no. 4 (January 2001), 419–445. Gratitude is also expressed to Diana L. Pesek of the Pennsylvania State University Journals. She allowed me to reuse as Appendix 2 my “Benjamin Franklin: A Masonic Enlightener in Paris,” Pennsylvania History LIII, No. 3 (June 1986), 165–180. Martin Miller, Jean Shumway, and Steve Joseph of the Butler County Community College in many ways were most helpful to me in obtaining needed library materials. Dr. David Anderson of the same college provided me with invaluable computer and editorial assistance. Dr. S. Brent Morris, who is the editor of Heredom, has consistently offered prudent advice to me. Finally, I deeply appreciate the diligent work in many realms of my beloved wife, Patricia B. Weisberger.