Most books are the product of willful isolation, created by many hours of prolonged solitude. This one was never like that. It’s been a deeply collaborative project from the beginning, and I’ve been lucky to work with so many talented people along the way.
I owe a major debt to the publicists and editors, agents and assistants—too many to name here—who helped convince authors to contribute to this project. Thank you for blocking out time from crowded schedules, for facilitating phone calls to private offices and hotels on the road. This book would not exist without your work.
Thank you to my editors at The Atlantic—to Spencer Kornhaber, who took a chance on my pitch for an unorthodox weekly column, and subsequently to Ashley Fetters and Sophie Gilbert for shepherding many of these pieces into public life.
To Debbie Kahkejian, loyal reader: Thank you for reminding me weekly that this work matters.
To Doug McLean: Thank you for embarking on this creative partnership with me, for lending your vision to this project, for the late nights you spend planning and sketching and perfecting. Our work together has been a mainstay now for years; I consider it a great privilege, and a pleasure.
To my amazing editor, Sam Raim: Thank you for seeing the potential for this book from the beginning, for knowing intuitively what it needed at every turn, and for taking on the enormous logistical task of making it more than an idea. You simply made everything so much better.
To my agent, Ellen Levine, who enthusiastically took on a book project with unique challenges and complexities: I could not ask for a better reader and advocate. Thank you.
To my wife, Rachel: The seed of this project, like so much of what I do, sprang directly from our conversations. Thank you for encouraging me, always, to think bigger but also to follow through.
Finally, I’m deeply grateful to my author contributors: You took time away from your own projects to open up about your private memories, to find language for the workings of the mind, to let me look over your shoulder while you write. Thank you, too, for sharing these cherished texts. There is a human impulse to guard what is precious and keep it to oneself—but you have generously, freely shared what you most value. I’m a better, wiser, more productive person as a result, and I suspect—as this book makes its way into the world—that I won’t be the only one.