This book was the product of many people working together, and I want to acknowledge their help.
Two Librarians of Congress, Dr. Jim Billington and Dr. Carla Hayden, deserve enormous thanks from me for serving as the official hosts of the Dialogues. Both Jim and Carla assigned individuals to help recruit the authors whom I thought would work best for the series. Jim assigned the responsibility to his chief of staff, Liz Morrison. Carla asked Marie Arana, the former book editor of the Washington Post and a consultant to the Library, to undertake this task.
Both Liz and Marie did an outstanding job of contacting the authors and working out the schedule of their appearances. (Scheduling can be difficult, for we must always take into account the often changing congressional schedule.)
Many other people at the Library of Congress contributed to the success of the Dialogues and the making of this book. Helena Zinkham, director for Collections and Services and chief of the Prints and Photographs Division, and her staff were extremely helpful in tracking down images and related information, as were Becky Brasington Clark, head of the Library’s publishing office, and her colleague Aimee Hess. Barbara Bair, a historian in the Manuscript Division, and many other curators at the Library did a wonderful job of preparing exhibits of manuscripts, photographs, and other objects from the Library’s collections for each event. The Library’s special events coordinators, most recently Kimberly McCullough, helped arrange the Congressional Dialogues dinners and tracked down interview transcripts. John Haskell, director of the John W. Kluge Center, program manager Travis Hensley, and other Kluge Center staff provided much-appreciated logistical support for the editing process. And Ryan Ramsey, Dr. Hayden’s chief of staff, contributed invaluable coordination and feedback.
This book would not have been possible without the enthusiastic participation of so many distinguished authors. I would like to thank each of them for adjusting their schedules to appear at one of the Dialogues, to meet with the members of Congress at the pre-dinner reception, and to let me interview them in the Great Hall of the Library.
Bob Barnett, my law school friend of nearly forty years, was outstanding in his role representing me and working with Simon & Schuster.
Jonathan Karp, the president and publisher of Simon & Schuster and devoted supporter of history-related books, agreed to publish the book, and was very helpful with his ideas about organizing it and describing the whole Dialogues process.
One of Jonathan’s best decisions was to assign the editorial role to Stuart Roberts, who also has a real interest in and knowledge of history. His editorial suggestions throughout the process were invaluable.
Among his best suggestions was the title. I proposed about two dozen possible titles. He proposed one that I instantly recognized was far better than anything I suggested.
To prepare the interviews for publication, I enlisted the help of Jennifer Howard, an accomplished editor and writer who shares my affection for the Library, for books, and for precise writing. Jennifer was highly recommended to me by Marie Arana, and I want to thank Marie again for that help with this undertaking.
I asked Jennifer to get the interview transcripts, to review them and edit them for accuracy, to get the authors to approve the edited versions of the transcripts, and to review and help edit the summary that I wrote about each author’s background and interview. In all of these tasks, Jennifer did a spectacular job, for which I am very appreciative.
My personal staff was also extremely helpful with the Dialogues series and with this book.
My chief of staff, Mary Pat Decker, helped the Library of Congress to organize the events and helped to make certain that the congressional schedule, the authors’ schedules, and my schedule could come together.
Laura Boring and Amanda Mangum were also indispensable in their work on the Dialogues series and on the preparation of the text of the book.
Robert Haben was quite helpful in preparing materials for me to review about each of the authors and their books. I made it a personal requirement to read every author’s book (or books, when relevant). But Robert provided valuable research about what the authors had said in earlier interviews and what reviewers had already written about the books.
Finally, I would also like to acknowledge the support of so many members of Congress for the Dialogues series. Their attendance at the events, and inviting their spouses, staff, or constituents to attend, has certainly helped the Dialogues become an ongoing, bipartisan, and well-attended event in the unofficial congressional schedule.
Without each of the individuals described here, this book would not have come together. But to the extent that there are errors or omissions, they are undoubtedly my own responsibility.