Acknowledgments

A big thank you goes to my agent, Don Fehr at Trident Media, my editor Elisabeth Dyssegaard, my copyeditor Steven Wagley, Katherine Haigler, and the whole team at Palgrave Macmillan.

This work benefited from my conversations with my wife, Vanessa Davies, and many people who are not my wife, including Michael Shermer, anthropologist Ellen Dissanayake, art scholar Denis Dutton, psychologist Jonathan Haidt, religion scholar Johannes Wolfart, philosopher Heidi Maibom, my photographer and all-around smart guy Daniel Thompson, psychologist Daniel Saunders, film and stage director Montica Pes, microbiologist Alex Gill, novelist Johannah D. Spero, game designer Lou Fasulo, and theater professor Daniel Mroz. Much of the color research was gathered by Jobina Li.

Thank you to my research assistants, who helped me collect the references for this book, including Heather Burch, Jessica Cockbain, RhiAnne Brown, Leah MacQuarrie, Michelle Sappong, Sterling Somers, and Sarah Lacelle.

Thanks to the people who read and commented on drafts of this book: Janet and James Davies, philosophers Peter Slezak and Jeanette Bicknell, computer scientist and novelist Anthony Francis, science podcaster Darren McKee, and especially English professor Donald Beecher.