Читать книгу The Jacksonian Conservatism of Rufus P. Ranney - David M. Gold - Страница 8

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Professional historians usually have lots of help in thinking about, researching, and writing their books. In formal acknowledgments they customarily thank fellow professors, graduate assistants, support staff, funding entities, and others who aided them.

They also absolve everyone but themselves from any responsibility for the defects that nevertheless mar their work. As an independent scholar who held a full-time, nonacademic job while working on this book, I had no funding, little research assistance, and few contacts in the academic world. Consequently, I have few people to thank and no one to blame (even if I were inclined to spread the fault around) for what appears in the following pages. However, I would be remiss if I did not express my gratitude to several individuals. Christian Samito and Austin Allen read the entire manuscript and made valuable suggestions for its improvement. Once the book is in print, I will probably regret not having taken all of them. Michael Les Benedict read and offered thoughtful insights on an early version of the introduction—the sort of thing he has been doing for me since my graduate school days of the 1970s. John Ashworth and John Brooke, neither of whom had any idea who I was, kindly consented to read small portions of the manuscript and assured me that I was not completely off base. Last but not least, Anya Berg, having graciously agreed to rummage through a collection of semi-organized papers at a distant university, sent me useful information that I would not otherwise have obtained. My heartfelt thanks to them all.