So many generous colleagues and friends have helped us with this book that we would have to write another to enumerate all our debts. We could never have navigated the vast and complex landscape this book tries to cross without their able guidance. They bear no blame for the missteps we surely took, nor any unwanted responsibility for where we ended up. But they deserve much credit for pointing out paths to deeper understanding that we could not have found on our own.
Our first debt is to the experts at universities around the country and abroad who have listened to early versions of these arguments and given us valuable suggestions. We owe special thanks to Fred Block for organizing a wonderful conference in Tomales Bay, California, where we were grilled (in a friendly, California way) by a generous group of scholars who shared our desire to better understand American inequality, including Andrea Campbell, Neil Fligstein, Larry Jacobs, David Karol, Lane Kenworthy, Bob Kuttner, and Suzanne Mettler. They sharpened our thinking and steered us away from many mistakes. They also provided an opportunity to spend time with some of our favorite people in one of the most beautiful places in the world.
Although not at this conference, Larry Bartels, Thomas Edsall, Paul Krugman, Nolan McCarty, Keith Poole, Howard Rosenthal, Philipp Rehm, and Martin Gilens all contributed important insights to this book—through their own pioneering work and (in the cases of Bartels, Gilens, McCarty, and Rehm) through their helpful reactions to ours. We owe a great debt as well to Theda Skocpol and the members of the American Political Science Association Task Force on Inequality and American Democracy—which has inspired a growing body of scholarship that has informed our thinking.
This book would have been impossible to write without relying on the intensive investigations of hundreds of scholars and journalists (a profession more vital and diverse today than ever) who have explored this vast subject matter. We hope the endnotes give a small indication of our huge debt to those efforts. Writing a book like this is, in some ways, a deeply personal and private matter. Yet we realized every day that our private efforts rested on the contributions of a huge, sometimes invisible community.
Our visible community included a stellar team of research assistants at Berkeley and Yale. Devin Caughey, Lee Drutman, Chloe Thurston, and Sophie Raseman were not just intrepid trackers chasing down our elusive suspects. They contributed in important ways to the shaping of our arguments and our understanding of these issues. Elizabeth Kelly, a brilliant Yale Law School student, provided great help with the historical material in chapter 3, and organized an intensive fact-checking process that involved her super-capable ally, Josh Rosmarin. Tory Bilski kept the New Haven part of the operation moving forward with her usual efficiency and grace—whether the problem was logistical or grammatical.
Our deep thanks as well to the team of professionals that helped turn our initial musings into a book. Sydelle Kramer, our agent, has been a steady guide throughout the long process, with a remarkable capacity to iron out problems and offer insight. We have learned that it is always best to do what she advises—including publishing this book with Simon & Schuster. At the press, we have worked with a stellar and committed group. Dedi Feldman saw potential in this project early on and helped bring it to life; we hope she will be pleased with the end result. Roger Labrie has been an indefatigable editor, offering just the right mix of sympathy and prodding necessary to whip the book into better shape. Our copyeditor and production editor—Jeanette Gingold and Jonathan Evans—were there at the end to make the book read better and move us toward the finish. We are the grateful beneficiaries of their skill and professionalism. This has been a team project from start to finish.
Our wives, Oona and Tracey—who have supported us both intellectually and personally at every step and who have shown great patience and empathy as we missed more than one deadline in the urge to dig just a little deeper—deserve far, far more than a written acknowledgment. But that is all we can give here, and we do so with loving appreciation.