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The Pentagon's New Map > Director's CommentaryAcknowledgementsI wrote this under the impression that it would appear at the front of the book, right after the Table of Contents, meaning I figured the reader would have had a chance to read about my three great mentors and get some flavor of how I readily admit that the material in this book is far larger than just my input or intellectual journey. Damn it! I was trying to get all humble-like to start off on a good first impression. Still, coming as it now does at the end of the book, I like the material just as well. It seems to strike all the right notes and flows fairly easily. Mark Warren says that happens when you're not trying to write whatsoever, but simply write in synch with your thinking—you know, that flow thing. Well, this section really did flow one afternoon, in about 30 minutes. I knew what to say and I said it. Biggest thought process involved whom to include in the "everybody else" paragraph. Every acknowledgment has to have one. Sometimes they are huge, like the closing credits of Lord of the Rings. I knew I didn't want a typically huge list, because then it makes those who actually make it feel less important than they thought, and that is not what you're going for. So you really think about this one, and then you either do it up alphabetically or you impose some order. I did a mix of importance and chronology, so Phil Ginsberg is up front due to importance and Critt Jarvis is tail-end Charley because he's the most recent official inductee to my circle of friends. In between comes everyone else I would feel bad about not mentioning. I know some of these people will wonder why they only got this mention and not something in the body of the text. That was a conscious decision on my part. Remembering to Peter Jackson's director's commentary on LOTR: The Fellowship of the Ring, I decided the book was not going to be chock-full of new introductions, meaning some new character you meet every second page who's only onstage for a brief moment or two. So we kept the cast of characters to the bare minimum, keeping the autobiography of the vision up front and the most personal. Other details . . . (1) The US Government report cited on page 387: it is supposed to consist of a 100-page annotated version of the brief I co-wrote with Bradd Hayes, plus a reprinting of a slew of articles I wrote since 9/11 with Art, Hank, and on my own, plus additional articles from Art and Bradd themselves. At first we were going to publish this with some in-house unit at the Office of the Secretary of Defense, then we thought of National Defense University, then Art pitched it to the Naval Institute, and now it seems back with NDU. Truth be told, the publication of my book may kill the publication of that report by making it OBE. If that is the case, then no great loss for me since everything I have in the proposed book is already available via this site—except for the annotated 100-page version of the brief (which lacks the bifurcation-of-DoD material, which arose after I wrote this USG version—meaning it joined the brief as a result of my writing this book, which came months later). My promise is this: if the USG report never comes out, I will eventually post the annotated version of the brief on this site. (2) I first had Bradd Hayes [p. 387] in the everyone else paragraph. But after thinking about it for a while, it only made sense to break him out for his own paragraph. Bradd is hugely important to me, not so much as the great mentor as my Holy Trinity, but more simply as a friend, colleague, and co-conspirator of change within DoD. (2) In addition to thanking Neil Nyren at Putnam [p. 387], I would now add Marilyn Ducksworth (Exec Director of PR) and Steve Oppenheim (Dir of PR). Both are "ab fab" in that very PR sort of way. (3) It's weird, but I've only met my agent Jennifer Gates F2F once [p. 387], and that was back in March 2003 when I gave her a huge version of the brief at ZSH's main office in Manhattan. Such is connectivity in the Internet/cellphone age. (4) Mark Warren [p. 388] and I have spoken about tackling the "Emily Updates" manuscript next as a project. Would like to see this happen, but who knows what fate has in store for Mark and I. (5) I must admit, it saddens me greatly to realize that my Dad [p. 388] will never see this book hit the streets. He also never got to see the final-version hard-cover copy. He'll also never see me in the Wall Street Journal or on any of the political talk shows he watched so religiously. But my Mom [p. 389] now becomes the sole receptacle for all that, and she seems more than up to the task. The connection I have with my Dad seems almost completely undimmed by his passing, so strong are those bonds. (6) In the end, I am glad I have maintained my marriage to Vonne [p. 389]. It is hard to imagine how empty this experience would have been if I had let that most essential connection in my life slip away. It's hard to imagine I would have bothered to write this book at all. |
Putnam, 2004 |
