IT IS A TRUISM THAT EVERY BOOK TAKES AN AUTHOR A LIFE to write. In this case, the truism is apt. I’ve been teaching much of the material in this book for decades and my first thanks is to my students, whose searching questions have deepened my curiosity, challenged my assumptions, and sharpened my understanding.
My next thanks is to my colleagues. To write this book, I undertook the incredibly delightful and joyful work of learning and writing about many people, events, ideas, and institutions I’d never studied before and reading the work of generations of distinguished American historians and political scientists. I leaned on their expertise in other ways, too. Extraordinarily generous colleagues read drafts, pointed me to readings, and talked me through trouble spots. Special thanks to David Armitage, David Blight, Tomiko Brown-Nagin, Davíd Carrasco, Linda Colley, Nancy Cott, Noah Feldman, Gary Gerstle, Annette Gordon-Reed, John Harpham, Elizabeth Hinton, Adam Hochschild, Tony Horwitz, Maya Jasanoff, Walter Johnson, Jane Kamensky, James Kloppenberg, Ann Marie Lipinski, Louis Menand, Charles Maier, Lisa McGirr, Julie Miller, Martha Minow, Benjamin Naddaff-Hafrey, Latif Nasser, Sarah Phillips, Leah Price, Emma Rothschild, Bruce Schulman, Erik Seeman, Rogers Smith, and Sean Wilentz.
I benefited, as well, from immensely helpful comments from audiences who listened to me present versions of this work as the George Bancroft Memorial Lecture at the U.S. Naval Academy; the Spencer Trask Lecture at Princeton University; the Patten Lectures at Indiana University; the Richard Leopold Lecture on Public Affairs at Northwestern University; the Theodore H. White Lecture on Press and Politics at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government; the F.E.L. Priestley Memorial Lectures in the History of Ideas at the University of Toronto; the Distinguished Visiting Fellow Lecture at the University of Connecticut, Storrs; and the Callahan Distinguished Lecture at Case Western Reserve University. I received particularly crucial suggestions during seminars at Harvard, including in the History Department, at the Nieman Foundation, and at the Program on Constitutional Government, as well as during presentations at the American History Seminar at the University of Cambridge and at the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
All books of this scope represent the culmination of long-waged labors. To write this book, I in many cases revisited stories that I have told before—in lectures, in essays, and in books—about everything from the histories of taxation, debt, and political consulting to the lives of Jane Franklin, Andrew Jackson, Woodrow Wilson, and Barack Obama. I have drawn freely from my earlier teaching, research, and writing, especially from articles originally written for The New Yorker. My boundless thanks, as ever, to my editor there, Henry Finder. Readers of the magazine may recognize the ghosts of old magazine essays haunting these pages, brought to life in new form and for an altogether different purpose—and with endnotes clattering after them like chains.
Jon Durbin at Norton asked me if I would write this book and I thought he was crazy but I’m glad he asked. Thanks as well to Tina Bennett, for cheering me on. Peter Pellizzari, Thera Webb, and Sean Lavery checked facts, saving me from many an error. Janet Byrne copyedited with peerless care and judiciousness. The amazing Pembroke Herbert compiled illustrations; Rebecca Karamehmedovic tracked down permissions. Marie Pantojan and Don Rifkin at Norton miraculously kept everything on track. The passion and wisdom of my editor at Norton, Robert Weil, are without rival.
Abiding thanks to dear friends: Adrianna Alty, Elise Broach, Jane Kamensky, Elisabeth Kanner, Lisa Lovett, Liz McNerney, Bruce Schulman, Rachel Seidman, and Denise Webb. Paul and Doris Leek have become my own parents. And to Gideon, Simon, Oliver, and Tim Leek: love, everlasting.