Acknowledgments

I am very grateful to the many, many people who have contributed their time, expertise, enthusiasm, and scholarship to helping me with this project. Endlings would have been impossible without them.

Specifically, I would like to thank: Elaine Ayers, Ross Barnett, Sibusiso Biyela, Laura Briscoe, Claire Cameron, Mackenzie Cooley, Devin Griffiths, Eddie Guimont, Dolly Jørgensen, Marc Kissel, Siu Kwan Lam, Alison Laurence, John Leavitt, Adrianna Link, Ilja Nieuwland, Eleanor Parker, David Petts, Fortunate Mafeta Phaka, Nick Pyenson, Megan Raby, Julien Riel-Salvatore, Lukas Rieppel, Douglass Rovinsky, Gessica Sakamoto Martini, Christopher Schaberg, Adam Searle, Kate Sheppard, Anna Toledano, Sarah Wild, and Kate Wiles. The “Writing Accountability Group” that Elaine Ayers facilitated in 2021 offered its unending enthusiasm and support for this project with many, many brilliant suggestions from friends and colleagues for ways to think about the materials.

The research for this project was made possible through my affiliate appointment with the University of Texas at Austin’s Institute for Historical Studies and the library and resource access that brings; Courtney Meador’s tireless administrative efforts ensure that my appointment shows up every academic year. I would also like to acknowledge Steven P. as well as the students, faculty, and volunteers in the Pen-City Writers Program; they have all encouraged and challenged me to think about writing in new, complex ways.

I am grateful to my editors, Doug Armato and Eric Lundgren, at University of Minnesota Press, for their interest in including Endlings in the press’s Forerunners series and for their thoughts, recommendations, and patience in bringing Endlings from “idea” to “book.” I would also like to thank Mike Stoffel for copyediting and Anne Carter for production and editorial assistance. Holly Zemsta’s edits and suggestions were much appreciated in the project’s early drafts as was Rachel Garner’s fact-checking of a near-complete draft.

As always, I appreciate my parents’ support of the book writing process and their interest in the topic. I am most grateful to my husband, Stan, for his never-failing belief and optimism in this—and every—book project. And our daughter, Esther, was kind enough to share her illustrated copy of Aesop’s Fables with me while Endlings was being written.