This book originally sprang from interactions between literary agent Jeff Herman and me. Jeff was eager for me to do a book since I hadn't done one in so many years. I had the concept but wasn't keen on the energy and time commitment necessary to complete a work of this size. Having done three books before I knew it would be a lot of work. Jeff kept at me, persuading me he would sell my book and publishers would receive it well and others would help me. He provided a lot of motivation. Many would tell you he is the best book agent in America today and I don't disagree. If you're thinking of writing a book, I encourage you to read his books: Write the Perfect Book Proposal: 10 That Sold and Why, and Jeff Herman's Guide to Book Publishers, Editors, & Literary Agents, 2007. He really is as good as it gets.

Then I recruited Lara Hoffmans and Jennifer Chou. Lara had been an investment counselor in my firm's client services group dispensing advice to more than 100 clients having had a prior background in the industry. But before that she had a background in writing. Jennifer had worked for seven years in our research group primarily doing capital markets research for either me or Andrew Teufel. We came to terms. Jennifer would be responsible for the data and visuals and fact checking and Lara would rough out the book. Working from meetings discussing what we would cover, we created an outline that point by point and item by item Lara turned into a very rough draft while Jennifer started cranking out data. Then I started editing and changing. After an edit Lara would clean it up, edit my edits, and we would look at it again.

But the data burden was too great. There is a mass of data in this book and statistics behind the data. And a lot of visuals—120 in all—and all data-laden. So my firm's research department pulled out the stops. Jill Hitchcock, Group Vice President, Research, assigned Elizabeth Anathan, a long-time employee, to oversee a crew to work with Jennifer in data and fact checking. Ultimately, there was a lot more data and facts checked than ended up in the book and that took a lot of effort from Jared Brenner, Mark Christy, Jason Dorrier, John Hertzer, Greg Miramontes, David Watts, and Rose Zarrinpar. I appreciate all their work because without them it would have been impossible to put together the mass of material that my words describe. In effect, they set up a process to cross-check their cross-checking so little would get lost in the process. I particularly appreciate Elizabeth's organization of all of this and David Watts, who has done a lot of work with me in the past doing visuals, putting up with my increased angst as we got close to the end and I got nervous.

Speaking of data, I would be remiss not to thank the following data providers: Bryan Taylor and Global Financial Data, Thomson Financial Data-stream, Standard & Poor's, Bloomberg, and Ibbotson Analyst, without whose contributions to the investment community, we may not have conducted our studies and research both for this book specifically and over the years leading up to it. The quality and scope of market data get better every year, allowing us to continue expanding our work and create new capital markets technology. Very importantly for readers, there is appendix material provided courtesy of Global Financial Data that I don't believe general book readers have ever been able to access before. I must thank Forbes—four of my columns are used in the book and were reprinted by permission of Forbes magazine, Forbes 2006. While I write them, they do belong thereafter to Forbes.

As the book began to take shape and after I'd done one complete edit, I passed parts of it on to various people for comments. Meir Statman is the Glen Klimek professor of finance at Santa Clara University. Meir has been a friend for 22 years and we've done a lot of behavioral finance research for a long time and published a handful of scholarly research papers together. He and I are very different. He is the academic. I am the practitioner. We often agree and often disagree which is why our work together has been fruitful. But this time we weren't working together. Meir is very clear that this book isn't his cup of tea. It is too much, too edgy, and too assertive, and in many ways and places Meir simply disagrees with me. But it's my book, not Meir's and despite our many disagreements we're friends and the book is vastly better for his criticisms as I adapted parts of it in many ways to accommodate some of his disagreements with my assertions.

I'm always appreciative of interactions with Jeff Silk and Andrew Teufel. I've worked with Jeff since 1983. He is Vice Chairman of Fisher Investments and, with Andrew Teufel, the three of us make all portfolio management decisions at my firm. Andrew, one of the firm's three co-presidents to whom the 850-plus employee force reports through Group Vice Presidents, has been with the firm a decade and is the brightest young person it's ever been my pleasure to work with. Both Jeff's and Andrew's comments helped, and particularly Jeff had major impact on changing Chapter 5. Justin Arbuckle, who runs our institutional group at my firm, also offered criticisms that changed my tone in a number of areas.

Grover Wickersham put a lot of effort into editing drafts. On planes, at night at home, in London, in Canada, in the Bay Area. Wherever he was, he was editing everything from big ideas down to copy editing. Grover is a securities lawyer by background, having once upon a time been Los Angeles Branch Chief of the Securities and Exchange Commission. In his role as a practitioner, he has edited a lot of prospectuses. He said this was a lot more fun by comparison. I'm indebted. He also runs an investment advisory business and is Chairman of the Purisima Funds.

Obviously I'm indebted to my friend Jim Cramer for his very nice Foreword. Where a guy like Jim finds time only the Lord knows—except Jim has a lot more energy than most people. Others whose encouragement and help are appreciated include Pierson Clair and Thomas Grüner. From Thomas, who runs a money management firm of some note in Germany, I got an instant offer to have the book translated and published in Germany, and so it will be by the very same firm he suggested.

Ultimately, before submitting the manuscript I did five complete edits of every chapter and a sixth on three of them. While I am deeply indebted to Lara and Jennifer for their exhaustive work in organizing and laying out the book and drafting and data—in the end my fingerprints are all over it and all errors and inadequacies are mine.

The time I put into those edits came directly from time I otherwise owe my wife of 36 years. I appreciate her tolerance, devotion, and love as always. Finally, I acknowledge that without the input from my father, Philip A. Fisher, I never would have moved as a youth in the direction of capital markets. He loved stocks from the time he was 21 in 1928 until he died in 2004 at 96. I wish he could have lived to see this book and I dedicate it to his memory.