I recently had the opportunity to interview Paul Theroux, long one of my favorite, and one of America’s most prolific, authors. We appeared before an adoring audience at the vibrant Hill Center on Capitol Hill to discuss Deep South, his delightful and insightful new book, and his first account of travels within the United States.
While it was an honor to meet and interview Theroux, I also felt somewhat intimidated. Deep South is his fifty-first book. For me, Buyer’s Remorse is only number seven. We’re almost the same age. What have I been doing all my life? But, no matter how far behind Paul Theroux I may be in books published, he and I are in the same place on this point: No author succeeds alone. Every book is a team effort.
My team starts with Carol, who helped develop the idea of this book over many conversations at the dinner table—and then suffered through the many evenings and weekends I chained myself to the word processor. It includes, perhaps unwittingly, my colleagues in the White House press corps, whose tough questions at the daily press briefings helped me appreciate both where President Obama has delivered and where he has fallen short.
For this book, I was lucky to reassemble the same team I’ve worked with before: research associate Kevin Murphy and friend and agent Ronald Goldfarb. Kevin’s flatout the best, fastest, and most reliable researcher and editor there is. Ron’s one of the most respected and successful agents in the book world. Both contributed as much to the ideas and substance of this book as its named author.
As captain of our team, we couldn’t have done better than Mitchell Ivers, who steered me through publication of Spin This, my first book, in 2001. How great to work with Mitchell again, and the dedicated, hardworking team at Threshold Editions of Simon & Schuster, including President Louise Burke; Associate Editor Natasha Simons; Director of Publicity Jean Anne Rose; cover designer James Perales; copy editor Sean Devlin; production editor Al Madocs; and many more.
To one and all, a heartfelt thank-you.