First, we must acknowledge the great debt we owe to the historians and scientists who have written extensively during the past fifty years on different aspects of rabies: Jean Théodoridès, Patrice Debré, Neil Pemberton and Michael Worboys, Kathleen Kete, Harriet Ritvo, Alan C. Jackson, John D. Blaisdell, Wu Yuhong, Merritt Clifton, Bert Hansen, George M. Baer, Charles Rupprecht, and others.
We are also enormously indebted to Neil Henry and the Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism for their generous appointment of us as visiting scholars, which allowed us to use the world-class resources of the University of California at Berkeley to complete our research on this book. Many thanks, too, to the UC libraries and their staff.
Thanks are due, as well, to friends and colleagues who helped us with research and inspiration during the writing of this book. Jon Lackman, Gideon Lewis-Kraus, and Henrik Kuhlmann gave indispensable translation advice. Ellen Silbergeld’s lab at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health provided an early sounding board for the book’s basic structure. Wired gave Bill leave to finish this project; thanks in particular to Thomas Goetz, Jake Young, and Chris Anderson. Also, many thanks to Rafil Kroll-Zaidi, Meghan Davis, and Jess Benko, all of whom read early drafts of the book and gave valuable feedback.
On a personal note, we’d like to thank our family: Bob and Mary Wasik, Emmett L. Murphy, Jean Austin, Dave and Jen Wasik, Becca Hurley, Emmett J. and Anne Murphy, and Janet Wasik.
We’re tremendously grateful to our agent, Tina Bennett, for encouraging us in this project and helping to see it through. Thanks, too, to the brilliant team at Viking who made this book crisp and beautiful: Maggie Riggs, Wendy Wolf, Bruce Giffords, Ingrid Sterner, Jim Tierney, Carolyn Coleburn, Rebecca Lang, Yen Cheong, Kevin Doughten, and all the rest.
Finally, we can’t say enough about our editor and friend Josh Kendall, who championed this book and improved it at every step of the process. From his deep interest in Greek myth to his obsession with cheap horror, Josh’s enthusiasm for this project has been nothing short of rabid.