ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to Jonathan Sacks, president of America Online, for suggesting this book, and to Larry Kirshbaum and Maureen Egen of Warner Books for their willingness to publish it quickly and for the benefit of charity.

We also want to thank Jennifer Nessel for her help in researching, and Rose Hilliard for her help in assembling our content. Claire Zion gracefully shepherded the book through its accelerated publication process. Thanks also to the production team: John Kane, Jaime Putorti, Cecilia Marcon, David Honigsberg, Christopher Tinney, Rob Stauffer, Anna Maria Piluso, and Rebecca Springer.

For help in preparing our AOL content, we are grateful to an indefatigable team of researchers—Emily Heckman, Jod Kaftan, Jennifer Stroup, Sally Swift, and Caroline Walker—who delved through some 60,000 message board posts. Anne Borsch eliminated obstacles as soon as they appeared. And we are deeply indebted to the AOL programmers, photo editors, community leaders, chat hosts, and others who worked around the clock for a week to create a vast online memorial and healing center.

Our greatest thanks go to the 31 million members of the AOL community, who shared their deepest feelings with us and made this book possible.