Designer Susan Cunningham

Associate Editor Becky Menn-Hamblin

Copyeditor Nancy Harless

Contributing Editor Kim Cressell

 

Maryellen Kennedy Duckett, writer and my partner in life and love, and the reader I most want to please

My daughters Katharine, Mary, and Cassidy, lights of my life

Brad Duckett, my brother and best friend

Keith Bellows, my mentor, business partner, and dearly missed friend

Kathy Hall, my first copyeditor extraordinaire

Michele MacDonald, my first fact-checker extraordinaire

Pam Beaver, my first boss as a college graduate

Chris Whittle, the serial entrepreneur who taught me about sales and storytelling

Laura Eshbaugh, who looked out for me

Wendy Lowe Besmann, one of my first editors

Kitty Bean Yancey, a great journalist and mentor

Steven Friedlander, my business partner and friend  

Chuck Morris, a marketing business owner and friend

Tim Cohane, my college magazine writing professor

Sid Burrell, the philosopher and my teacher

Douglas Crockett, my first newswriting professor

Timothy Weiner, my first journalism teacher in high school

Jim Kennedy, my brother-in-law and patron

Doug Scott, longtime copyeditor and one of the first online reporters in the nation

Stephen Abrams, Paula Copp, and Carol Powell, dear friends who’ve always been there through my adult life

Special appreciation to Apple, which may be a heartless multinational corporation, but I love the insanely great stuff it makes that allowed me to write, edit, and publish this book.

Don Duckett, my father, who tried his best

And finally, to my beloved mother, Elizabeth Duckett, who gave me everything