Acknowledgments

As usual, my expressions of gratitude begin with Debbie Celia of the Westport Public Library in Westport, Connecticut. Difficult questions cannot dismay her, nor can information exceed her reach. Working with her is like having a genie who grants a limitless number of wishes without even requiring a bottle to be rubbed.

Among other librarians in Westport who helped me greatly were Marta Campbell, Marjorie Freilich-Den, Sylvia Schulman, Nancy Kuhn-Clark, Carolyn Zygmont, Lynn Hudock, and Susan Madeo, the last of whom arranged for my numerous interlibrary loans, and then arranged for them a second time when I found I had not studied the books sufficiently the first time.

I also wish to thank people and institutions from all over the country who sent me copies of hard-to-find documents or directed me down a path I would not have seen without them: Alison Beck, Center for American History, University of Texas, Austin; Barbara Buss, Fairfield Public Library, Fairfield, Connecticut; Nancy DelVecchio, Sacred Heart University, Fairfield, Connecticut; Hoyt Fields, Museum Director, Hearst Castle, San Simeon, California; Louisiana Division/City Archives, New Orleans Public Library, New Orleans; Suzanne Pichler, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, New York City; Holly Snyder, John Hay Library, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island; Margaret Tufts Tenney, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas, Austin; Claudia Stone Weisberg, the Pulitzer Prizes, Columbia University, New York City.

I also appreciate the quotations, insightful in all cases, that were provided for the text by Dr. Jeffrey Bass of Quinnipiac University, Hamden, Connecticut; Dr. William Stueck Jr. of the University of Georgia, Athens; and former NBC newsman Sander Vanocur.

The highest praise an author can give to the editor of his book is to say that the book is better because of the editor’s perceptions. I am delighted I can say that about Stephen S. Power of John Wiley & Sons. To his assistant, Ellen Wright, I say thank you for a variety of services and a patient attitude, which I require whenever the subject is operating a computer, no matter how simple the task. My gratitude is no less for the book’s senior production editor, Lisa Burstiner, and its publicist, Matt Smollon.

Among the clients represented by my agent, Timothy Seldes of Russell & Volkening, are the estates of Barbara Tuchman, Eudora Welty, A. J. Liebling, and Bernard Malamud. That I am among Tim’s many living clients means that I can talk to him on the phone whenever I need to, or in fact whenever I feel like it, and those conversations are always among my life’s small—and sometimes large—pleasures.

Finally, I thank my wife, son, and daughter, to whom this volume is dedicated. The truth is that none of them did anything to help me write the book; writing is of necessity a solitary business, even more solitary for me than for others, because I have never been the kind of author who likes to show early drafts of his work to family and friends for their comments. It is my life to which Dianne, Toby, and Cailin make their contributions, not my work, and I would be lost without them.