There are so many people whose support has been incredibly meaningful to me in the writing of this book.
First and foremost, I could not have done this without the support of my wife, Karen. She read drafts, tolerated my being on the computer when we could have been enjoying things she might have preferred, and was a very serious listener and critic of my ideas. After fifty years of marriage, she knows my work well, and after hearing at least 400 of my lectures during the past decade, she has also gotten to know what the average reader and listener might like to hear. She keeps my feet on the ground.
Howard Jacobson (PhD in the health sciences) added literacy to my manuscript as my “with” author. Howard is a brilliant writer. (I especially liked his metaphors.) He, together with Leah Wilson, our editor at my publisher, BenBella, made this book more readable, rearranging some of my chapters and connecting them into a sensible story. I can hardly be more complimentary about their professionalism and their dedication to this project. I am privileged to have acquired the best editorial team possible, and their deep investment in the book’s message is especially gratifying. I want to acknowledge as well the considerable interest in my work shown by Glenn Yeffeth, publisher of this book and its forerunner, The China Study.
There are many others who contributed to my career in experimental research and policy-making: undergraduate honors students, graduate students, technicians, visiting scholars, and support staff in the laboratory and in the office. In addition, I greatly benefited from hundreds of colleagues who coauthored research papers, served on expert committees with me in the development of food and health policy, and critiqued our research findings for publication. Also among those who deserve my sincere thanks are the staff members of my foundation, headed by Micaela Cook and her predecessor, the late Meghan Murphy. I am most appreciative of their generous, sincere support. I could not have written this book without their contributions. Thanks are due also to my eldest son, Nelson, a true scholar of things social, entrepreneurial, and linguistic, for his careful reading of the final manuscript and putting me right on issues that could have gotten me in trouble.
Most importantly, I am grateful to the American taxpayer, who provided generous amounts of funding for my research (obtained competitively and mostly from the U.S. National Cancer Institute of NIH), thus providing for me an unusual opportunity to conduct experimental research free of any direct industry bias.
Finally, I am very grateful also to Cornell University, which recruited me to a full, tenured professorship at age forty. Director of the Division of Nutritional Sciences Mal Nesheim, Dean of the School of Nutrition Dick Barnes, Dean of Agriculture Keith Kennedy, and President Dale Corson each interviewed me and together granted me a position that provided an almost unparalleled opportunity to reach for the skies. Mere words cannot adequately express my gratitude for their expressions of support; the exemplary personal philosophies of these gentlemen gives meaning to the idea of academic freedom, a concept that needs all the support it can get in these challenging times.