Some of the topics covered in these essays are related to my area of research, and I am supposed to know something about them. In many cases, though, these are about subjects that are not in my area of expertise (which, as will be seen, hasn’t prevented me from developing some addled opinions about them). In these cases, I have been very dependent on the generosity and clarity of some of my colleagues in discussing their work and ideas. I thank Jeanne Altmann, Jay Belsky, Laurel Brown, Jonathan Cobb, Jared Diamond, Bill Durham, Laurence Frank, James Gross, Ben Hart, Charles Nemeroff, Craig Packer, Edward Paul, Larry Squire, Michele Surbey, Andrew Tomarken, the late Amos Tversky, and Richard Wrangham for their assistance; any factual errors are of my own doing.
I am particularly grateful to the research assistants who helped me with many of these essays—Steve Balt, Roger Chan, Michelle Pearl, Dave Richardson, Serena Spudich, and Paul Stasi. They have been heroic in finding the most obscure of facts in the farthest corners of archival libraries, surfing the Internet for answers to trivia questions, and laboring at odd hours of the night to call experts on the opposite side of the globe. I also thank Helen and Peter Bing, a visionary couple who have made grants available to various Stanford professors for forays into unorthodox teaching initiatives. Most of these essays started off as lectures, and the Bings made the labors of these assistants possible.
I also thank the teachers who got me into science and, just as much, made me excited about wanting to communicate about science to nonexperts: the late Howard Klar, Howard Eichenbaum, Melvin Konner, Bruce McEwen, Lewis Krey, Paul Plotsky, and Wylie Vale.
Many of these pieces were originally published in Discover, or in The Sciences, and the writing was often greatly improved by my editors there. It has been a great pleasure working with them, and I thank them all—Burkhard Bilger, Peter Brown, Alan Burdick, Robert Coontz, Patricia Gadsby, Paul Hoffman, Richard Jerome, Polly Shulman, and Marc Zabludoff. Those readers who are familiar with The Sciences will know of the superb artwork that graces its pages; that is the work of Liz Meryman, and I thank her for consenting to read these pieces and give advice on accompanying artwork.
Walter Bode rather indirectly made it possible for these essays to see the light of day, and I thank him for that. Liz Ziemska, my agent, far more directly made it possible, and my great thanks to her as well. Hamilton Cain and Jennifer Chen have helped every step of the way at Scribner, and it has been a great pleasure to work with them.
Finally, my gratitude to my wife and best friend, Lisa, for endless numbers of reasons. However, there are special grounds for gratitude with respect to this book—during vacations, during times when she has been struggling with some deadline, during times when she has just been trying to get some sleep; during good times and bad, through thick and thin, in sickness and in health, she has put up with my excited ranting and raving about whichever of these essays I’ve been working on at the time.