There are so many people I ought to thank that I feel compelled to begin here by apologizing in advance to anyone who belongs on these pages and didn’t make it. This book began as a discussion in a cloakroom with Robert Kuttner, a friend and fellow member of the Examiners Club in Boston. We talked about writing a book together. When we discovered that our views were similar but not congruent, he encouraged me to write this book on my own and introduced me to Ike Williams, who became my lawyer and agent. My author-brother Gene Stone strongly encouraged the project at about the same time, and he has become a key adviser at every phase. An old friend, economics professor Ben Friedman, urged the effort as well. Because I have terrible trouble starting work on a blank sheet or screen, I recruited professional help with the first of many drafts. I hired a terrific writer named Mike Bryan to interview me extensively by videoconference call, subject by subject, and then to transcribe and edit the interviews into rough text. While I doubt that a single sentence of that initial draft remains in the book by now, I have little confidence that I could have gotten started without Mike’s help.
As I began to produce the next series of drafts, I turned to many experts for advice. Among those who read the whole manuscript and offered suggestions (but who do not necessarily agree with or endorse any of the positions I take) were Jack Beatty, David Ellwood, Stephen Kinzer, David Moss, Rebecca Henderson, Norman Rosenthal, Geoffrey Arnold, Tom Daschle, Raymond and Jaana Calamaro, and Clayton Yeutter. Then there were additional friends and friends of friends to whom I turned for expert advice on specific chapters. No one should assume that these readers, any more than the first batch, concurred with a single thought. Some, in fact, made their disagreements plain. Bob Pozen, Jim Roosevelt, and Alicia Munnell read and commented on the Fiscal Balance chapter and especially on issues surrounding Social Security. Janet Gornick, Christopher Houston, Carolyn Osteen, and Bob Lord made suggestions on the Inequality chapter, the three lawyers all concentrating on the pages about trusts. Michael Goldstein, Laura Perille, and Irvin Scott commented on the Education chapter. Alexis Pozen, Dr. Barbara Bierer, Dr. Robert Osteen, and Dr. Jonathan Quick provided expert commentary on the Health Care chapter. I received comments or help on the final chapter, dealing with Financial Sector Reform, from Alan Levithan, Steve Carlsen, and Paul Volcker.
There was no chance I could have done all the research, or just about any of the footnoting, by myself. Clémence Scouten and Daniel Tartakovsky pulled the long oars on those tasks. Clé helped with numerous other time-intensive chores at every stage as well. Next, I want to thank the team at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. The company’s board chairman, Larry Fish; the trade division publisher, Bruce Nichols; my editor, Alexander Littlefield; and the copy editor, Barbara Wood, all contradicted the conventional warnings I was given about author-publisher relationships. They were a professional joy to work with. I cannot at this stage thank the publicity team at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt nor the outside consultants I may employ to help market the book. They are unidentified as yet. If the book sells well enough to get a second printing, this space will go to them.
And, of course, the most important supporter of this project and of its author—intellectually, emotionally, and in every other way—was my wife, Cathleen Douglas Stone. Even Cathy, though, cannot be held responsible for any errors. Those would be mine.