Acknowledgments

Friends give us the courage to go on, and I couldn’t have written Off Course without Mona Simpson’s conversation and hands-on writing help. Laurie Winer, Mary Corey, and Lily Tuck also read the novel in draft. I am deeply grateful.

The economists Cora and Jim Moyers, Julie A. Nelson, and Mark Maier graciously took the time to talk to me; particularly helpful was Julie A. Nelson’s brave and clarifying book Economics for Humans.

Publication is a long collaboration; I am grateful to all who have helped Off Course along the way: agents Scott Moyers, Jin Auh, and Sarah Burnes; the team at FSG, including Dan Piepenbring, Oliver Munday, Jonathan Lippincott, Tobi Haslett, Rodrigo Corral, and especially my editor, Sarah Crichton.

I’ve benefitted immeasurably from Jim Potter’s intelligence, patience, and steadying love. If he ever thought marrying a novelist was romantic, I have by now roundly disabused him of that notion.