I AM INDEBTED TO many people for their help in writing this book—some for technical advice, some for detailed criticism, some simply for their counsel and encouragement. I will not embarrass my friends and colleagues by revealing the extent of their complicity in this book. Let me therefore list them alphabetically: Moses Abramovitz, Daniel Bell, Stanley Burnshaw, Paul Ehrlich, John Holdren, Arien and Irving Howe, Robert Silvers, Hans Staudinger, Thomas Vietorisz. One name only I place out of order because I know that its bearer is willing to be excused from the usual disclaimer that frees all the above from any responsibility for the content of these pages. As always, I salute Adolph Lowe, the spiritual co-author of these pages and the original source of the metaphor of Atlas.1 Finally, let me thank my secretary, Ms. Salzman. I do not think there is a Perfect Secretary in the Greek gallery of the gods, but if there were, her name would surely be Lillian.
A brief word on sources. I have sought to identify all quotations and to underpin with citations those parts of the argument in which scientific expertise is critical. I have not burdened the text with appeals to authority for the economic, sociological, or psychoanalytic sections of the text, save in occasional places where a reader might wish to know of a parallel argument. So much of the book is built on the foundation of my life as well as my studies that extensive footnoting seemed pointless: unnecessary to those who will accept the message of the book as it now stands, unavailing to those who will not.
* * *
Amen.
1. See “S ist noch nicht P,” in Ernst Block zu ehren (Frankfurt am Main, 1965), p. 142. Professor Daniel Bell has pointed out that Bertrand Russell (unbeknownst to Professor Lowe or myself) used the metaphor of “a weary but unyielding Atlas” in a moving conclusion to his essay “A Free Man’s Worship” (1903).