Читать книгу Barbed Wire - Reviel Netz - Страница 7

Research for this book was begun when I was at MIT as a fellow at the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology. Then, and since, I was fortunate to have access to important collections: at Harvard, the Widener Library and the Baker Business Library (housing the U.S. Steel and Wire Company archive); at Stanford—where I teach—the Green Library and the Hoover Institute Library. During my stay in Moscow (teaching for the Stanford Overseas Program), I studied at the archive of the Memorial Society, with its unique collection of unpublished memoirs from the Stalinist era. I am filled with gratitude to the staffs of all those libraries—a gratitude multiplied by wonder and admiration at the selfless generosity of the members of the Memorial Society in Moscow.

Myles Burnyeat, Paul Laity, Richard Milner, Tom Radko, and Suzanna Tamminen have all, in turn, read my original manuscript and convinced me to proceed with it, first in abbreviated form as an article published by the London Review of Books (July 2000), then as this book. Further comments were made by many friends and colleagues, of whom I mention just a few: Maya Arad, Moritz Epple, Lori Gruen, Arne Hessenbruch, Marie Huong Nguyen, Andrea Nightingale, Leonard S. Reich, Aron Rodrigue, Relli Shechter, Walter Scheidel, Amanda Vinson, James R. Voelkel, Kelly DeVries, and Nicolas Wey-Gomez, as well as two anonymous readers for Wesleyan University Press. Maya Arad, in particular, has commented on the manuscript several times over, guiding it as it achieved its style. Responsibility, of course, remains with the author.

Ariel Tsovel’s research and activism inspire my own work in animal history. He wanted me to produce work with both intellectual and political dimensions; I hope I did.