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The Pentagon's New Map > Director's CommentaryThe Jacket CoverWhat to say about this . . . First off, I do love the art work. I love the font and the way Brian Mulligan of Lovedog Studios placed the subtitle within the white, semi-transparent band. I like the all-caps presentation, especially on my name. I also like how the map wraps around the back side of the jacket. The choice of colors is cool as well. I love the deep purple (especially on the hard cover under the jacket), although the land color is a bit funky for my taste (I will admit, though, the mushroom-like quality I have always liked as a house paint color). The combination of the purple and the green on the inside cover make me think of the Seattle Seahawks colors, when, as a Packer fan, I resist such imagery (yes, L'Affair Holmgren). Still, come to think of it, green and canary yellow would have looked pretty bad. Steve Oppenheim, the director of publicity at Putnam, wrote the description that winds its way from the inside front flap to the back inside flap. I think he did a great job. I basically wrote the mini-bio on the back inside flap. I really like the green framing around the map by William McNulty of the New York Times. I had him update the map to include data on responses through the end of 2003, and to correct a few mistakes in the placement of data in the original Esquire art work. Oddly enough, I did catch one mistake in the map just before we closed down all editing and packed up the entire volume and shipped it off for printing. I was reading an article on Nepal in the New York Times (coincidentally), and I checked my proof version of the map to make sure that Nepal was in the Gap. At that point I noticed that Bangladesh was incorrectly marked with a line extending from the label "Bangladesh," which actually sits inside China's territory. The line extended down into that bit of India that protrudes, hernia-like between the narrow channel between Bhutan and Bangladesh, whereas Bangladesh is actually located a bit south from where the line ended. I called Neil Nyren about this and Putnam was able to extend the line in such a way that it ends up inside Bangladesh proper and not some frontier Indian state. If you look very carefully at the map you will see what I'm talking about. The line extending from the label "Bangladesh" just barely hits the eastern-most end of the Bangladeshi territory. I have the mistake memorialized in both my office and home. I had posters made up of the proof version and had them framed by a local art store. They are not nearly as pretty as the presentation in the book (actually, the well matted-version I have at home is quite stunning), but they do have that flawed distinction which is kind of fun—a sort of special collector's edition. I should note that we originally planned to have the map inside the body of the text on special slick paper, but the cost of that seemed too high to Putnam, so Neil came up with the great idea of putting the map both fore and aft on the inside covers, which worked out beautifully in the end—and in the beginning. The blurbs on the book are worth describing—at least in terms of the process. Neil Nyren asked me way back in August 2003, as I was just starting to write the book, to email everyone important I could think of for possible blurbs for the book. They would have to be willing to speak "on the work of Thomas P.M. Barnett" (as it says on the back jacket) because—of course—I hadn't actually written the book yet. So I sent emails to everyone I could think of who had read my articles and actually seen the master brief. As they sent back nice blurbs, I relayed them all to Neil in New York City. It was a weird process, asking everyone you know for a stunning compliment, but it's part of the process so I did it with great aplomb. You will notice one person's blurb: Paul D. Davis of the Industrial College of the Armed Forces at National Defense University. Notice how that isn’t the title we used. Instead we call him simply "national security expert, Washington D.C." Why? ICAF is part of the Defense Department, meaning he is a government worker. He could give me a blurb for this money-making venture; he just couldn't use his government title. That would be conflict of interest. Same thing holds for Art Cebrowski, so instead of calling him the Director of the Office of Force Transformation, Office of the Secretary of Defense, we simply identify him as a retired admiral, which is his regular citizen title. I love his blurb the best for obvious reasons. The "formers" who offered blurbs include Sherri Goodman of The CNA Corporation (former Deputy Under Secretary of Defense) and William Raduchel, the former CTO of AOL Time Warner and the former chief strategy officer of Sun Microsystems (some combo, huh?). Sherri saw me brief at the DC chapter of the Council on Foreign Relations, arranged by then director of that office, Bob Orr, who also has a blurb on the jacket. Bill participated in one of my NewRuleSets.Project economic security workshops in 2003. John Petersen is a good friend and mentor (President, The Arlington Institute). The Esquire quote comes from Editor-in-Chief David Granger's "Editor's Letter" in the March 2003 issue that featured my original article. Asif Shaikh is a friend of mine, a Pakistani who's been a citizen of this country—he likes to remind me—for longer than I have. I interacted with Asif a lot during my time working for the U.S. Agency for International Development in the mid-90s. He is one of the smartest guys I know about development economics. That he was willing to say that about my work was really gratifying. Peter Schoettle of Brookings had me in to the institution in early 2003 to brief a new class of Senior Executive Service officials that he was training up as part of a long-time partnership between Brookings and the Department of the Navy. Mac Thornberry of Texas had me into the House of Representatives to brief his working group on defense: a dozen or so representatives who regularly get together to discuss global security issues. He is a very impressive fellow, so I valued his blurb a great deal. Finally, Don Daniel is an old friend and former War College colleague. He's had me down to Georgetown to brief his graduate class, which is what generated the nice blurb he offered. Can you guess he's a Democrat? Two last points… The author's photo I had shot just down the street from my house in Portsmouth RI at a nice studio my wife picked out. The photographer did a nice job of getting the right shot. He asked me beforehand: "Funny book or no?" I said, "Humor in it, but a serious subject." So he coached me into a suitably serious look. Neil Nyren sent me all the material that was going to appear on the jacket in mid-January, giving me about 24 hours to proof it all to my heart's content. His original plan was to cite my original geocities website as the "author's website." When I saw that, I knew immediately I needed to go out and get www.thomaspmbarnett.com registered. So I told Neil to run with that URL instead, and immediately emailed Critt Jarvis, asking him how to make that happen. Not too surprisingly, Critt ends up being the webmaster of the site (tricky bastard!). However, I must say that, if not for Critt's constant prodding regarding blogging, I don't think I would have come up with the idea to generate and post all these "DVD extras" like this commentary. All in all, a good pathway dependency … |
Putnam, 2004 |
