I wish they had been right. By the time the manuscript was almost complete, thousands of Americans were storming the U.S. Capitol and the President of the United States was demanding a fight should he be removed from office. Suddenly the manuscript seemed prophetic.
Writing a book is a lonely, uncertain experience. It is an act of faith: faith that one has the ability to do justice to the subject, that one’s vision is clear and dispassionate, and that it will find an audience. But it is also a collaborative process. From the start, I have been blessed with friends, colleagues, and strangers who have given generously of their time. They answered endless questions, checked my work, and pointed me in new and promising directions; I would not have been able to write this particular book without their gracious help.
I owe an enormous debt to Amanda Cook, my editor at Penguin Random House, who was my biggest advocate. She embraced the project from the start and gently coaxed me to write the book that she, and the world, would want to read. Thank you also to Gareth Cook—my book whisperer—who taught me how to construct a tight narrative and tell stories that were both rich and absorbing. He was relentless but kind, demanding but generous, uncompromising but enthusiastic. This would have been a very different book without him.
Many strands of research needed to come together to craft these chapters, and I needed help from a community of scholars to do so. Monty Marshall answered a hundred emails about the PITF and Polity data with unshakable good cheer. He gave me an enormous amount of free information and for that I am deeply grateful. Richard English answered my questions on Northern Ireland’s Troubles and made sure I got my facts straight. Lars-Erik Cederman, Simon Hug, and Kristian Gleditsch happily engaged with my detailed inquiries about ethnic civil wars, explaining the nuances of different statistical findings. Jim Fearon, David Laitin, and Jesse Driscoll read the manuscript and served as my “canaries” in the coal mine; if it didn’t pass their sniff test it was unlikely to pass the test of other civil war experts. Thank you also to Judybeth Tropp, Chris Parker, Steph Haggard, Rose McDermott, Paul Frymer, Ken Pollack, Zachary Steinert-Threlkeld, Gregoire Phillips, Nico Ravanillo, Isaac Pelt, Jacob Glashof, Seth G. Jones, and Jonathan Moller, all of whom rapidly responded to questions related to particular parts of the book. Thanks to my students in my civil war class at UC San Diego in the winter of 2020 who helped me work through the big ideas that formed the structure of the book. Finally, thank you to Marin Strmecki and the Smith-Richardson Foundation for financial support, and to my dean, Peter Cowhey, and Nancy Gilson at GPS, who ensured that I had time to write during what turned out to be two challenging years.
I had the great good fortune to interview a set of extraordinary people. I thank Noor, Berina and Daria Marcov, Mikhail Minakov, Anton Melnyk, Jonathan Powell, Lukas Pietrzak, Jená Cane, and Eric Liu for sharing their personal and sometimes painful stories with me. I also thank James Fearon, David Laitin, Monty Marshall, Erika Chenoweth, Christian Davenport, and Jay Ulfelder for sharing their expert knowledge of both violent and nonviolent conflict as well as their thoughts on America’s current situation. I learned much from each of them.
Autumn Brewington is not only a dear friend but an extraordinary editor. She read the very earliest parts of the manuscript with characteristic enthusiasm, propelling me forward while gently steering me away from writing like an academic. I was lucky to have a team of RAs helping me throughout the process. Thank you to Summer Bales, Ama Debrah, Wendy Wagner, and Wakako Maekawa. An even bigger thanks to Natalie Boyer, who was my indispensable finder-of-all-facts no matter how obscure. She had the gift to synthesize enormous amounts of difficult material into simple summaries which were then easy for me to use. Hilary McClellen swooped in at the end of the process to fact-check the entire book. Her stream of excited emails made this final punctilious phase surprisingly pleasurable.
Writing also requires the love and support of good friends. Thank you to Lindi Nicol, Ronan Brown, Emilie Hafner-Burton, Angela Amoroso, Shannon Delaney, Amy Mueller, Tim Burke, Casey Burke, Jeannie Chufo, Nindy Leroy, Donn Van Winkle, Chris Parker, Mary Braunwarth, Ernie Villanueva, Giselle Brown, Camryn Delaney, Lina and Christian Waage, Marie and Faheem Hasnain, Colette and Glynn Bolitho, Laura and Ethan Boyer, Emma and John Spence and the Hajnal/Licharz/McGrath clans for always checking in on me even at my most grumpy.
But the greatest debt I owe to my family. My daughter, Lina, has lived her whole life in the shadow of my study of civil wars. She has endured trips to former conflict zones and seen things that most young kids don’t see. On a particularly difficult trip to northern Laos (age 7), she turned to me with tears in her eyes and said: “Why can’t we go someplace normal like Hawaii or Mammoth—just like everyone else? No one goes to Laos, Mommy!” But most of all she has had to share her mother with a computer screen during a time when we both would rather have been dancing, or cooking, or doing anything else together. She is my greatest joy and source of pride. I love her twice as much and four times more.
And then there is Zoli. When I first signed my book contract, I turned to Zoli and said, “I can’t do this without you.” Without complaining, he took care of everything—everything—in our life so that all I had to do was write. Not only that, but at the end of the day he was waiting for me with big, open arms, a glass of wine, and all the love and adoration I could ask for. He has been my number one supporter, my best friend and confidante, my inspiration for how to live an honorable and compassionate life, and the person who makes everything better. He is the best human being I know.