I would first like to express gratitude to all the students who have been open and kind enough to listen to me for the two decades or so that I’ve been teaching these and other lessons in theoretical writing. I would also like to thank Ian Almond, Rahna Carusi, Tim Dean, Lisa Downing, Janet Gabler-Hover, Chris Kocela, John Lowther (for the expert indexing and sharp eye for infelicity), Randy Malamud, Melanie McDougald, Mark Noble, and Matthew Roudané for their support, advice, assistance, and encouragement in the years that I have been planning this book and writing and rewriting these sentences. Special thanks go to Haaris Naqvi, incomparable senior commissioning editor at Continuum/Bloomsbury, for his splendid support of this project, and to my colleague and climbing partner Mark Nunes, who has so often held my life in his hands. And as always, all my thanks and all my love go to Liz Stoehr.