Many deserve thanks for helping bring this project to light. Dean Richard Chilcoat, Sam Kirkpatrick, and Arnie Vedlitz generously coordinated the financial support provided by the George Bush School of Government and Public Service, including the Ed and Evelyn Kruse Faculty Fellowship, which provided me with the historian’s most valued commodity: time. Having the opportunity to meet Mr. and Mrs. Kruse as a consequence of their generosity has proved a true pleasure. Joe Dillard’s exceptional staff expertly facilitated the Bush School’s financial support, even at a distance. Michael Desch and the Bush School’s Scowcroft Institute of International Affairs provided research assistance for the final footnote push, and Mike proved ever generous with his own sage counsel. My thanks also go to the dedicated librarians and research staff of the National Archives in College Park, the British National Archives in Kew, and the Bush Presidential Library in College Station, whose work quite literally makes the writing of history possible. Warren Finch, Robert Holzweiss, and Mary Finch in particular deserve hearty thanks, although with the book in print I now owe Bob service on his softball team. Yale University’s International Security Studies provided a much-beloved office and valuable resources during a visiting semester when the bulk of this book was written. Ted Bromund, Ann Carter-Drier, John Gaddis, Paul Kennedy, Mihn Luong, and Monica Ward each deserves deep thanks. As always, the Mine Hill Road Development Fund generously smoothed the rough edges whenever needed.
Charles Hermann deserves particular praise and acknowledgment. As program director of the Bush School’s international affairs section, he generously facilitated a timely and much-appreciated teaching leave to allow me to work on this book. Indeed it was Chuck who first casually suggested that “there is a diary over at the library you ought to take a look at.” He opened numerous doors, provided wise advice in response to all my queries, and helped guide me through some of the political minefields a study such as this inevitably confronts. He is a most valued and insufficiently heralded leader for our program, and this book would not exist without him.
Bush School students helped research this project, including a memorable capstone group comprising Lillian Gaa, Jasper Mason, Jennifer Simar, Katie Kaufman, Mark Sones, Michael Swanzy, Mike Hannesschlager, Reid McCoy, and Rusty Rodriguez. Jessica Hart copyedited the final draft with speed and efficiency. This book is dedicated to these students and to their peers, past and future. My colleagues at the Bush School gave meaning—and contributed more than a few laughs—to each day’s work, while Rose Williams and Janeen Wood went above and beyond to keep our offices functioning with a smile. Their dedication is inspiring.
Several members of President Bush’s staff provided invaluable assistance, including Tom Frechette, Claire Pickart, and Michele Whalen. Terry Lacey’s efforts were most appreciated as well.
And then there is the incomparable Jean Becker, whose knowledge of Bush’s history is unprecedented, and whose enthusiasm for enabling historians to write that history—in their own words and drawing their own conclusions—is second to none. With a million tasks on her daily agenda, she still found time to answer my queries, always ending with the reminder that further questions were welcome. She is undoubtedly one of the kindest souls with whom I have ever worked.
One of the great pleasures of this project was the opportunity it afforded to interview several of its principal subjects, including President George H. W. Bush, Barbara Bush, James Baker, James Lilley, Nicholas Platt, and Brent Scowcroft. Ronald Kaufmann helped track down the elusive “ghosts” that haunt the pages of the diary. President Bush took time out from his retirement—the most peripatetic on record, I’d venture—to compose this book’s invaluable preface. That each so generously gave of his or her time and recollections speaks volumes about their collective commitment to history and to the scholars who write it.
Needless to say, it is George Bush’s own words that fill the diary pages that follow, and his support for bringing these pages to the public has never wavered. Yet never once did he interfere with the scholarly process. He understands the way academics work, and he appreciates that history must be written without after-the-fact influence from the men and women who made it. I only wish his views on this matter were more widely held.
Princeton University Press did a marvelous job with this book, and special thanks must go to Brigitta van Rheinberg and Clara Platter, who presided over this project with grace and enthusiasm from the beginning. They are the kinds of editors who make one want to do more. My thanks as well to the anonymous reviewers engaged by the press, whose perceptive comments improved the manuscript immeasurably, and to Sydelle Kramer, who handled the business side of the project. Princeton Editorial Associates performed a truly marvelous job of producing the book.
This foray into what is, for me, a new period of history would not have been possible without the generous aid of friends and colleagues. Richard Immerman, Mark Lawrence, Jason Parker, Andrew Preston, and Tom Zeiler each offered line-by-line edits of my interpretive essay, a feat far beyond the normal bounds of friendship. Andy Scobell did the same for the entire diary, and Ren Mu (and family) helped identify those depicted in the book’s photographs. Their comments undoubtedly saved me from numerous mistakes. The good Dr. Preston deserves praise as the world’s most trusted sounding-board, while Mark helped piece together the more complicated aspects of Bush’s personal diplomacy during a memorable jaunt down the New Jersey Turnpike. Tom McCormick offered his usual wise counsel, while Jason Castillo, Chen Jian, Christopher Layne, Brian Linn, Larry Napper, Adam Seipp, Jeremi Suri, David Vaught, and Susan the breadmaker each offered invaluable comments. Further sound advice came from attendees at a roundtable on personal diplomacy sponsored by the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations and from participants in a forum organized jointly by the Bush School and the Shanghai Institute for International Affairs.
Jennifer Turner performed a modern miracle in helping our son Marshall thrive. Hope played her part as well. Friends and relatives who think they deserve mention here should reread what I wrote in my first book, as what I wrote there still stands.
The last to be mentioned are always the most important, but prudence typically dictates that they receive the fewest words. I was Marshall’s age when Bush served in China. Experience with my own toddler makes me appreciate all the more the trials my parents endured during the mid-1970s. Yet Marshall’s embrace of life’s passions inspired me (when not, on his command, flipping pancakes or edging the lawn for the thirty-second time that week) to add that one last footnote or to perform that one additional edit— to give the book real meaning—even when all I desired was a ra-ra of my own. The desire to make Katie proud served as all the additional inspiration I could ever need. Everything I wrote in the last book still holds true, even if her sense of propriety demands I keep these acknowledgments from becoming more personal still. But she knows there is so much more to it than that.