Special Thanks to

Big thanks to our editor Nancy Peterson; her expert touch, serenity, and compassion made this edition a pleasant one to create.

Thanks to Tracey Croom for her excellent production work and to Scout Festa for her skillful copyediting.

Our heartfelt thanks to Danielle Foster, the book’s compositor, who laid out the book and pulled off the job with grace and aplomb, and to the indexer, Emily Glossbrenner, who should be thanked for doing a thankless job.

We’re grateful to Peachpit’s Nancy Ruenzel and Nancy Davis for their support.

We’d like to express our special thanks to all of the high school, college, and university instructors who chose to use the previous editions of this book as a textbook for their classes.

Between the time we signed the contract for this book and when we began working on it, Dori was offered her dream job at Stack Exchange (http://www.stackexchange.com). She could not have worked two jobs and still maintained a semblance of sanity without a great deal of help from others, for which she is truly grateful. In particular:

• Thanks to all the great folks at Stack: Joel Spolsky, Jeff Atwood, Robert Cartaino, Rebecca Chernoff, and Josh Heyer, among others—who gave their time and patience to help me stay employed while finishing this book.

• Thanks also to the amazingly patient women at Peachpit—I’ve worked with you for 14 years, and I’m still in awe of what you’re able to create.

• And in particular, I must thank my co-author, Tom Negrino, who did much more than his share of the load on this edition, and who postponed his (and my) tenth wedding anniversary celebration until the book was complete.