My indebtedness to the insights, skills, and kindnesses of others in creating this book is perhaps best told through chronology. It was due to a series of hardly inevitable occurrences that the project was started and through the generosity of others’ spirit that it grew and thrived.
It was my Washington Post colleague Shankar Vedantam who got the ball rolling. He had participated in the Templeton-Cambridge Journalism Fellowship in Science and Religion at Cambridge University, and for several years he suggested I, too, might find it valuable and enjoyable. My resistance broke down in 2007, and I’ll be forever grateful to Shankar for his persistence. My month at Cambridge in 2008 was spent listening to talks by prominent and often compelling speakers from many disciplines, and then was followed by my writing and presenting a paper on the topic I had selected—astrobiology and its implications for religion. The Cambridge program was expertly run with great hospitality by Fraser N. Watts, Director of the Psychology and Religion Research Group at Cambridge University and an Anglican priest; Julia Vitullo-Martin, director of the Center for Urban Innovation in New York; and Sir Brian Heap, a research associate at the University of Cambridge. Their help and encouragement was essential, and the fellowship provided an ideology-free setting for learning.
Part of the program involved having one’s work published, and, after an expert edit by my Washington Post editor Nils Bruzelius, my story about astrobiology did appear in the newspaper. Even before that, however, I was contacted by Washington literary agent Gail Ross, who wanted to know if I was interested in writing a book based on my Templeton work. I was again hesitant, but, after meeting with her and editorial director Howard Yoon, I saw how my germ of an idea could grow. The talents, insights, and enthusiasm they brought to that initial conversation still make me smile.
My good fortune continued when Priscilla Painton, executive editor of Simon & Schuster, concluded that my book proposal was something that she and her imprint wanted. What followed was two years of highly productive work with an editor who was not only superb at all aspects of editing, but was always available to give direction and advice, and was imaginative, savvy, and fun. Her skills, both personal and professional, were absolutely essential to giving the book its shape and reach. Her assistant, Michael Szczerban, was similarly a talented and professional pleasure to work with.
My travels kept me on the road constantly and required a not-insignificant investment of our family funds, but my wonderful wife, Lynn Litterine, encouraged me all the way. She also listened with care to my adventures and scientific insights (and misunderstandings) and gave much-valued feedback as I described both the science and the scientists I was meeting. A partner could not ask for more. I’m indebted as well to my father, Irving Kaufman, for support that was intellectual, moral, and financial, and wish that my mother, Mabel Kaufman, had been alive to watch the process unfold. Our two sons, David and John Litterine-Kaufman, helped provide the emotional richness that makes a project like this possible. I especially enjoyed talking with John (a veterinarian in training) about science, and David and his wife Elizabeth Nolte were a joy to be with in Istanbul—where they were living for a year and where Lynn and I stopped on my round-the-world reporting run.
Other friends, colleagues, and scientists who helped in many ways not always visible were Kathy Sawyer, Frances Sellers, Nils Bruzelius, Phillip Bennett, Vanessa Gezari, Rob Stein, Adele Nakayama, Yoko Hisakata, Liz Gulliford, Jonathan Trent, Radu Popa, Jonathan Lunine, Farid Salama, John Rummel, Ernan McMullin, Connie Bertka, Gary Rosen, Shawn Doyle, Amanda Achberger, Derek Litthauer, Seth Shostak, Laura Ventura, Marc and Deborah Taylor, Emily Yoffe, and Peter Perl.
As someone who writes about science but is not trained as a scientist, I had the sometimes daunting task of trying to understand complex issues in a wide range of scientific disciplines and languages. Most of the subjects of First Contact agreed to read parts of the book behind me and correct any misunderstandings. Errors that may remain are entirely my own.