Many people were involved in the production of this book. My editor, Mike Loukides, got this book rolling and provided many helpful comments along the way that substantially improved the book. Dr. Peter “Peppar” Parnes helped out immensely with the multicast chapter. The technical editors all provided invaluable assistance in hunting down errors and omissions. Simon St. Laurent provided invaluable advice on which topics deserved more coverage. Scott Oaks lent his thread expertise to Chapter 5, proving once again by the many subtle bugs he hunted down that multithreading still requires the attention of an expert. Jim Farley provided many helpful comments on RMI (Chapter 18). Timothy F. Rohaly was unswerving in his commitment to making sure that I closed all my sockets and caught all possible exceptions and, in general, wrote the cleanest, safest, most exemplary code possible. John Zukowski found numerous errors of omission, all now filled thanks to him. And the eagle-eyed Avner Gelb displayed an astonishing ability to spot mistakes that had somehow managed to go unnoticed by me, all the other editors, and the tens of thousands of readers of the first edition.

It isn’t customary to thank the publisher, but the publisher does set the tone for the rest of the company, authors, editors, and production staff alike; and I think Tim O’Reilly deserves special credit for making O’Reilly & Associates, Inc. absolutely one of the best houses an author can write for. If there’s one person without whom this book would never have been written, it’s him. If you, the reader, find O’Reilly books to be consistently better than most of the dreck on the market, the reason really can be traced straight back to Tim.

My agent, David Rogelberg, convinced me that it was possible to make a living writing books like this rather than working in an office. The entire crew at http://metalab.unc.edu over the last several years have really helped me to communicate better with my readers in a variety of ways. Every reader who sent in bouquets and brickbats about the first edition has been instrumental in helping me write this much improved edition. All these people deserve much thanks and credit. Finally, as always, I’d like to offer my largest thanks to my wife, Beth, without whose love and support this book would never have happened.