Acknowledgments

First and foremost, I’d like to thank Anne for bending the lifestyle and events of an entire household to fit this book into our lives. Hopefully one day Harrison and Charles will see “Dad’s silly book with the picture of a pirate on the cover” and they will be reminded of the pirates of their youth.

Thanks to my editors, Mike Stephens and Mitch Denny, for coming along for the ride and staying with it the whole way through—a journey with lots of memories for us all, I’m sure. Thanks also to my very special development editor on this project. When Betsey Henckels was first assigned to help me, I asked, “What exactly does a development editor do?” By the time we finished I sure knew—they do a lot! Thanks, Betsey.

To the highly respected bunch of guys who reviewed this manuscript during development, thank you! You helped make this a more solid product. I feel confident and proud in knowing that the book has your stamp of approval. Thanks to James Curran, Stuart Caborn, Doug Warren, Berndt Hamboeck, Aleksey Nudelman, Joe Litton, Robbe Morris, Dennis Gorelik, Dave Corun, Benjamin Gorlick, Bernard Farrell, Paul Wilson, Arul Kumaravel, Sergey Koshcheyev, Dan Hounshell, Richard Xin, and Andrew Deren. Special thanks to Anand Narayanaswamy for his technical proofread of the manuscript, just before it went to press.

Finally, a big thank-you must be extended to Marjan Bace and his great staff at Manning Publications. It was an absolute pleasure working with all of you.