Dude, Where's My Country_ - Michael Moore [110]
I would like to thank Ann Cohen and David Schankula, the brain trust behind this book. For months they labored with me over every word. They helped write, rewrite, reword, and redo the whole damn thing. They did the research, the proofreading, the fact checking. Then they rotated my wheels, blacktopped my driveway, and raised a herd of goats for me. How will I ever repay them?
Thanks also to Tia Lessin, Carl Deal, and Nicky Lazar for doing further fact checking and research when they should have been sneaking me into Afghanistan.
Also thanks to the interns—Brendon Fitzgibbons, Jason Kitchen, Sue Nelson, Stephanie Palumbo, Michael Pollock, Brad Thomson, and Doug Williams—to office staffers Rebecca Cohen and Emma Trask, and to those who read the manuscript and offered good suggestions: Al Hirvela, Joanne Doroshow, Rod Birleson, Terry George, Veronica Moore, Kelsey Binder, Leah Binder, Rocky Martineau, and Jason Pollock. Many thanks to the copyeditors: Lori Hall Steele, Mary Jo Zazueta, and Terry Allen.
I’d like to thank the Canadians. If you weren’t there, we’d have no idea what was wrong with us.
I would definitely love to thank my new publisher, Warner Books—I couldn’t ask for better people. First, thanks to Larry Kirshbaum, for saying that the most important thing was to “get the book right and for you to feel good about it—don’t worry about the deadline!” I have never heard a person in authority say don’t worry about the deadline! Don’t tell me that! You are too cool.
I would also like to thank my editor at Warner Books, Jamie Raab. Her enthusiasm, her authentic human response to my writing was just the boost I needed this year. I thank her for her patience and rolling with the crazy way I work. She’s the best.
I also want to thank all the other good people at Warner Books who had a hand in this project. Also, thanks to Paul Brown for his cover design. After the great job he did on Stupid White Men, there was no one else who could have made this cover (from an idea Schankula gave me) come to life.
Thanks also to the Jedi Master agent Mort Janklow. They’ll never touch me as long as you’re The Force!
I’d like to thank the musicians whose music I listened to while writing this book: Bruce, the Dixie Chicks, Patty Griffin, U2, Madonna, Alanis, Kasey Chambers, Steve Earle, Iris Dement, Nancy Griffith, Warren Zevon, R.E.M., Pearl Jam, Audioslave, and the Pretenders. It helps to write to a good beat.
I’d like to thank the Irish people in counties Donegal, Antrim, Derry, and Galway who invited us into their homes and let me hook up my laptop so I could finish the book while the publisher thought I was just down the street in New York.
Finally, thanks to my dad, who took care of me when I should have been taking care of him during this saddest of years.
About the Author
Michael Moore, who promised that, “barring success,” his last book would definitely be his last, unfortunately had the success he was avoiding and was forced to write this book. He has written the bestsellers Downsize This: Random Threats from an Unarmed American and, with Kathleen Glynn, Adventures in a TV Nation. Spending fifty-eight weeks on The New York Times bestseller lists, his Stupid White Men became the largest-selling nonfiction book of 2002-03 in the U.S., with more than 4 million copies in print worldwide. It won the “Book of the Year” award in Great Britain and absolutely nothing in the United States, except there is a crazy online petition for him to run for president. Michael Moore is the Oscar-winning filmmaker of Bowling for Columbine and the groundbreaking classic Roger & Me. He also is the Emmy-winning writer/director/host of TV Nation and The Awful Truth. He has failed