Three names appear on the covers of these volumes, but the encyclopedia is really the work of hundreds of people and could not have been conceived, edited, or produced without them. Since Anne Savarese, reference editor at Princeton University Press, asked me to join this daunting project, she has been a paragon of wisdom and efficiency. I quickly learned that when Anne makes a suggestion about a topic, an author, or anything else, the only wise choice is to take it. Claire Tillman-McTigue, her assistant, was equally sensible and resourceful. I have learned a great deal about editing from both of them. And my agent, Sandy Dijkstra, continued to give me lessons about the complicated business of publishing.
Terri O’Prey managed the production of the encyclopedia with great skill and unfailing enthusiasm. She had a fine team to help her. It included Tracy Baldwin, who is responsible for the elegant design; Dimitri Karetnikov, who handled the illustrations; the copyeditors Joseph N. Reilly and Brian Bendlin; the proofreader, Jeanette Nakada; and the indexer, Richard Comfort.
The title of “associate editor” does not really convey what Rebecca Edwards and Adam Rothman contributed to this work. As distinguished scholars, Rebecca and Adam used their deep knowledge and lists of contacts to find the right authors for dozens of topics and then helped make those essays both more probing and more precise. And their own entries are models of concision and analysis.
Finally, I am grateful to the over 150 people who agreed to write entries on a remarkable variety of topics in U.S. political history. Most are academics who teach history, political science, or a related discipline; some are journalists, and a few are advanced graduate students. But each took on the difficult task of synthesizing what is known about a vital subject and produced a thoughtful essay that makes sense of it. This is their encyclopedia, most of all.
MICHAEL KAZIN
Editor in Chief