While I worked on this book, my mother suffered a severe stroke, which resulted in my writing while sitting beside her as she slept in a hospital and nursing home. At times I held her good hand in my left and typed with only my right. I extend heartfelt thanks from my brother David and myself to the doctors, nurses, therapists, and others who helped my mother and tried to make her last days comfortable, and to the friends and family who rallied around us, especially Jo and Harry Brown, and my aunt Iva Yow. A few months later, my wife gave birth to our son, Vance—and I found myself thankful to midwives and other medical professionals and other friends and family. Sleepless and bleary-eyed, I was soon typing again with one hand, while holding a sleeping newborn. As they typed this book, my hands linked my mother and my son, the past and the future. For me, these memories will always weave through The Adventures of Henry Thoreau.
Thanks first and foremost to Laura Sloan Patterson, my wonderful first reader and reality check and wife. At Bloomsbury, thanks to George Gibson, friend and editor, who patiently and insightfully critiqued several drafts; to George’s assistant, Rob Galloway, his former assistant Lea Beresford, publicist extraordinaire Carrie Majer, tireless managing editor Nate Knaebel, eagle-eyed copy editor Emily DeHuff. I applaud my wonderful agent, Heide Lange, who has guarded and assisted my career through twelve books, and her excellent assistants Stephanie Delman and Rachel Mosner, and former assistants Rachael Dillon Fried. Special daily thanks to the wonderful staff at the Greensburg Hempfield Area Library—Cesar Muccari, Diane Ciabattoni, and the tireless interlibrary loan crew: Linda Matey, Allyson Helper, Christine Lee, Donna Davis, and Janie Mason.
Many thanks to the fine Thoreau scholar and cordial human being Sandra Harbert Petrulionis, professor of English and American Studies at Pennsylvania State University, who critiqued early and late drafts of chapters and finally read the entire manuscript—with intelligence and generosity and humor. Jeffrey Cramer encouraged and his books were most helpful. Rebecca Solnit prompted me to think more about Thoreau’s context. Several friends and scholars critiqued portions of the manuscript or encouraged the project in other ways: Ross King, John Spurlock, Christine Cusick, Josephine Humphreys, Maria Browning, Margaret Renkl, Serenity Gerbman, Jennifer Ouellette, Stephanie Wilson, Jerry Felton, Robert Majcher, and Ned Stuckey-French. Jon Erickson was essential, as usual, and invariably smart and entertaining, and the same description applies to Karissa Kilgore. Thanks to my brother David Sims, to Sarah Patterson and Jodi Sims (I have great luck in sisters-in-law), to my intrepid cousin J. R. Yow, and to Bill and Rhonda Patterson.