Acknowledgments

This story’s correspondent of The Times, Mr Alan Broder, takes his name from the generosity of a certain professor of computer sciences at New York’s Yeshiva University, during a 2020 fundraiser for Second Harvest Food Bank in central California.

Thanks are due, now more than ever, to the fabulous ladies and gents of Penguin Random House, who battled for this book through stressful weeks of pandemic lockdowns and election turmoil. That it exists at all is due to their dogged determination that life will go on, and stories will be told. Thanks, Hilary, Allison, Kim, Melissa, Carlos, Emma, Caroline, and a thousand others. I love you guys.

And when it comes to love, my buds and supporters, without whom I just can’t imagine this past year: Zoë, Bob, Alice, Merrily, Karen, Sabrina, Erin, John, Mary Alice, Anna, Angela, Clio, and all you Beekeeper’s Apprentices, I feel you at my back, pushing hard.

Thanks, too, to the folk at Bran Castle, Romania, who cheerfully replied to odd questions from the other side of the world—and who have one of the best websites out there. And to Olga, who corrected my Roumanian spelling.

In books, as in life, it takes a community.