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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
    I t took a vast conspiracy to write this book. As I worked on it and on the earlier articles that fed into it, many people were generous with their thoughts and their time. I’d like to thank everyone who answered my questions, whether that involved replying to a couple of e-mails or sitting down for a multihour conversation: Rasul Al-Ikhlas, Craig Baldwin, Bob Banner, Joel Best, Sophy Burnham, Gary Chartier, Amy Cooter, Robert Eringer, Rita Fellers, Leslie Fish, Bob Fletcher, Erich Goode, Anthony Hilder, Afrika Islam, Steve Jackson, Philip Jenkins, Jay Kinney, Paul Krassner, Michael Moor (not Moore!), Christina Pearson, Dino Pedrone, Arie Perliger, Sharon Presley, E. L. Quarantelli, Brian Redman, Lewis Shiner, R. U. Sirius, Ivan Stang, Jeannette Sutton, Mike Vanderboegh, Malcolm Wiley, and Peter Lamborn Wilson.
    Many other people passed along leads, helped dig up documents, offered useful advice, or otherwise lent a hand. Thank you to Bryan Alexander, Ceredwyn Alexander, Antero Alli, Sandy Asirvatham, Radley Balko, Greg Beato, Chris Bray, Tim Cavanaugh, Robert Churchill, Dan Clore, Dave Cushing, Soren Dayton, Eric Dixon, Jared Farmer, Thomas Fleming, Charles Paul Freund, the late Mary Frohman, David J. Halperin, Henry Hardy, Gene Healy, Mollie Hemingway, Robert Higgs, Mike Holmes, Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, Tom Jackson, Ben James, Lene Johansen, Bill Kauffman, Steve Kaye, Bruce Kodish, Psyche Lamplighter, Martin Levinson, Jim Lippard, Monica Lopossay, Rob MacDougall, Dave Mandl, Paul Mavrides, Daniel McCarthy, Don Meinshausen, Victor Morton, Michael C. Moynihan, Mark Murrell, Debbie Nathan, Ted Pappas, Jeffrey Pasley, Rick Perlstein, Mark Phillips, Virginia Postrel, Will Potter, Des Preston, Stacia Proefrock, Eric Rabkin, Dave Rahbari, Karen Rockney, Gabriel Rossman, Thaddeus Russell, Joel Schlosberg, George H. Smith, Randy Smith, Sam Smith, Thomas Ruys Smith, Seth Soffer, Clare Spark, Lester Spence, Lucy Steigerwald, Clark Stooksbury, Luis Vasquez, Timothy Virkkala, Dave Weigel, Cosmo Wenman, Shawn Wilbur, the late Robert Anton Wilson, and Oberon Zell. Thanks in particular to everyone who gave me feedback on all or part of the manuscript: George Baca, Amy Cooter, Brian Doherty, Jeet Heer, Jay Kinney, Rona Kobell, Ed Krayewski, Charles Pearson, and Amy Sturgis.
    It would have been a lot harder to write this book without the assistance of the Baltimore County Public Library’s interlibrary loan department: Jennifer Baugher, Deb Brothers, Helen Hughes, Timberly Johnson, and Joan Lattanzi. I also spent valuable time at the Labadie Collection at the University of Michigan’s Hatcher Graduate Library, where Julie Herreda, Kate Hutchens, and the rest of the staff were extremely helpful. So were the employees of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. And a warm thank-you to Mars De Ritis and Jim Dwyer for their hospitality while I was in Michigan doing archival research at Labadie.
    Matt Welch, my editor at Reason , didn’t just let me work out some of my thoughts in his publication’s pages; he let me take time off work to write the book, and he let me draw on the magazine’s resources in countless ways. My thanks to him and to everyone else at Reason who assisted in one way or another, including Mike Alissi, Ronald Bailey, Barbara Burch, Brian Doherty, Jim Epstein, Matthew Feeney, Nick Gillespie, Ed Krayewski, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Chris Mitchell, Ray Ng, David Nott, Mike Riggs, Damon Root, Scott Shackford, Peter Suderman, Jacob Sullum, Mary Toledo, J. D. Tuccille, and, not least, the interns who transcribed several of my interviews: Julie Ershadi, Melanie Kruvelis, John K. Ross, Nick Sibilla, and Calvin Thompson.
    My agent, David Kuhn, and his staff were instrumental not just in getting a publisher interested in my book proposal but in shaping the proposal itself. Billy Kingsland in particular was full of good ideas, and the book is much better for his and David’s work. My editor at HarperCollins, Barry