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The Pentagon's New Map > Director's CommentaryNotes… Or as we all call them at Putnam, the "end notes." I am pleased with how this all turned out, although I will confess that Neil Nyren's original idea scared me mightily. He dropped it casually in one email early in the writing process: he wanted virtually no art work in the book and absolutely no footnotes or even numbering of notes in the text. Everything would go in the back matter, leaving the page as clean as possible. In the end, only two graphics made the text: the Manthorpe Curve and Bill McNulty's two globes. I think this decision does make the text easier to read, especially since my notes' numbers would have come in tight clusters in the text, making some paragraphs look quite marked up. Still, I know this format is harder for the reader to track, but since the book was written for the masses and not the source-checking academics, it only seems fair to make the latter work a bit harder. I spent a huge amount of time putting the notes together. I spent an entire fortnight in late September—after I was done with the original first draft and while Mark Warren was completely his first great read—painstakingly rechecking every source and calculation, and putting together large 3-ring binders of hard copies of everything. It ends up being 283 separate endnotes, with a whole lot more sources because many of the end notes provide more than one and some as many as five or six. When Mark and I finally got clear with Neil about how he wanted the end notes to appear, I went through a hard copy of the book, highlighting all the sentences I would pull for identifiers. Then I went into electronic files and did the same, individually slicing down each to the elliptical format you send in the notes, leaving a blank placeholder for the pagination marker. It was quite a drill to get the references all looking basically the same. I will confess I did not consult any style book, but just went with my basic understanding of how to do things. I felt odd about the URLs, but between me and unnamed copy editor, a final style was enforced throughout. I will say, though, that nothing made me more nervous about the final copy than the end notes. I had typed in final pagination on the single electronic file that Mark and I turned in on 14 November, the same day I briefed the staff and senior leadership of Penguin Putnam in Manhattan. When I received the bound manuscript, the pagination of the notes was all wrong, apparently unchanged from the ones I had generated on the train into NYC on 14 November, thus not reflecting the new format of the bound MS. When Mark and I edited the First Pass galleys, the pagination was not included, but about two dozen sizeable typos were, furthering my sense of dread on the subject. I will say this: it all looks very good in the final product and I feel fully rewarded for the time and effort I put into each and every note. I must also say this: the only typo I have found in the final hard-cover version is in the notes: page 418, second line from top of page [Arab Human Developmen\t Report 2002]. Neil said there would be more than one—there always is. If anyone finds one, please let me know. Other than that—enjoy. To check out the sources alone, see the individual bibliographies posted by chapter on this site. |
Putnam, 2004 |
