Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic

Acknowledgments

Sheila K. Johnson, who has her Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley, spent endless hours in conversation with me about this book, and she carefully edited my first draft. As my wife of forty-nine years, she obviously knows where I’m coming from.

Tom Engelhardt is the founder and editor of TomDispatch.com, ‘a regular antidote to the mainstream media’ and a project of the Nation Institute. He is also the editor of all three books of the Blowback Trilogy— Blowback, The Sorrows of Empire, and Nemesis—for Metropolitan Books. I am indebted to him for his intelligence, integrity, and support for the American Empire Project, which he helped create.

Sandra Dijkstra, my literary agent, and her assistant Taryn Fagerness have worked miracles in having my books published in over a dozen languages around the world.

The poet John Shreffler, of Brookline, Massachusetts, dedicated to me his conception of the arrival of Nemesis in the United States.

Several close friends have helped me with comments, articles, suggestions, and conversations about this book. They are Dr. Kozy Amemiya, one of our country’s pioneer researchers on Okinawa, and her husband, Thomas Royden, avocado and palm grower; Dr. Barry Keehn of Los Angeles, an equally talented psychologist and political scientist; Drs. Maricler and Alfredo Antognini, exiles from the ‘dirty war’ in Argentina and major contributors to the world of painting; Dr. Patrick Lloyd Hatcher, lieutenant colonel U.S. Army (ret.) and a longtime colleague; Professor Yoshihiko Nakamoto of Shizuoka University, Japan. My geriatric cat, Mof, a Russian blue, helps keep me cheerful.