THIS BOOK IS the product of many hands, many minds, and many long hours. We began the project five years ago and have been actively pursuing it ever since. We are going to try to thank everyone seriously involved in it, but there will be inevitable lapses. For these we apologize.
The project has been an inspiring one. The canvas is vast; the subject more than deserving of a broad, detailed, and critical treatment. Everybody rejoices or complains about the role of investment in the world, but heretofore nobody seems to have acknowledged what it really is. We’ve tried to remedy that deficiency. Hopefully, we’ve made a credible start. The assignment is daunting, the work important and taxing, and the need, in our view, is great.
We have benefitted from a wonderful team of Research Associates, mostly economics majors at Harvard College but also undergraduates, graduate students, and recent graduates in other subjects and from other universities. They are: Yueran Ma, Rajiv Tarigopula, Xiaoxiao Wu, Charles Smith, Adam Chu, Amy Friedman, Mo Chen, and Albert Cui. They have our thanks for their substantial efforts.
Our last and longest-serving Research Associate has been Henry Shull. Norton has referred to Henry, not always out of his hearing, as our “vacuum cleaner.” The truth is just the opposite. Henry was always adding, not subtracting, vital material. There is no counting how many times he has rescued us.
Katherine Walsh, our executive assistant for the last three years, has been a rock solid member of the team as well. Her cheerful efficiency and remarkable resourcefulness have underpinned a massive portion of our total effort. Before Katherine, Sandy Brewer was a wonderful and also upbeat mainstay of our early progress.
In addition, two consultants played important roles. Almost throughout the life of the project, John Butman, himself an accomplished author, counseled us on how to navigate book creation, publishing, and promotion. He has been a great adviser, collaborator on project management, and friend. Anna Weiss, who worked with John, is very talented and always helpful. Another indispensable consultant has been Alyssa Stalsberg Canelli, who helped us with editing, especially in the dauntingly immortal Chapter One, which covers, by some reckoning, more than 5,000 years!
Finally, we want to thank our team from Columbia including Myles Thompson, our publisher, who believed in us without undue coaxing and let us run, and our editors Bridget Flannery-McCoy, who was a tough task master, Stephen Wesley, and Elizabeth King who organized the production, copyediting, and page proof processes.